The dawn of successful prediction of major earthquakes
Li Ping and Yang Mei’e
Author information+
Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration, Beijing 100029,China;Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration, Beijing 100029,China
Since 1949, Chinese scientists have successfully predicted occurrence of many major earthquakes, such as the Haicheng M 7.3 event in 1975 and the Asian Game Village shock of 1990. In recent 20 years, however, some seismologists abroad have taken a disappointed and pessimistic view to earthquake prediction because of several failures. They suggest that the efforts should turn toward other fields, such as identification of building’s earthquake-proof capability, enhancement of house strength, and development of precise observational systems which will facilitate fast locating of future major temblors and emergent relief on site. Such a pessimistic feeling has also influence some Chinese researchers of the seismological community who attempted to give up efforts for earthquake prediction. Meanwhile other scientific workers are insisting in experiments and practices in this field and achieved some inspiring results. In this paper, we present several representative cases to illustrate that earthquakes are predictable under some conditions.