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"As soon as the announcement was finished," the article says, "many men and women members with their whole families gathered in the square in front of the detachment gate. The first film was barely finished when a strong earthquake, 7.3 on the magnitude scale, occurred. Lightning flashed and a great noise like thunder came from the earth. Many houses were destroyed at once. Of the 2,000 people in the commune, only the 'stubborn ones,' who ignored the mobilization order, were wounded or killed by the earthquake. All the others were safe and uninjured; not even one head of livestock was lost."
Convinced that "earthquake prediction is a fact at the present time," and worried about the effect of such forecasts, particularly in U.S. cities, the National Academy of Sciences this week released a massive study entitled "Earthquake Prediction and Public Policy." Prepared by a panel of experts headed by U.C.L.A. Sociologist Ralph Turner, the study takes strong issue with the politicians and the few scientists who believe that earthquake predictions and warnings would cause panic and economic paralysis, thus resulting in more harm than the tremors themselves. Forecasting would clearly save lives, the panel states, and that is the "highest priority." Because most casualties during a quake are caused by collapsing buildings, the report recommends stronger building codes' in areas where earthquakes occur frequently, the allocation of funds for strengthening existing structures in areas where earthquakes have been forecast and even requiring some of the population to live in mobile homes and tents when a quake is imminent. Fearful that forecasting could become a political football and that some officials might try to suppress news of an impending quake, the panel recommends that warnings, which would cause disruption of daily routine when an earthquake threatens, should be issued by elected officials—but only after a public prediction has been made by a panel of scientists set up by a federal agency.
Other scientists are already looking ahead toward an even more remarkable goal than forecasting: earthquake control. What may become the basic technique for taming quakes was discovered accidentally in 1966 by earth scientists in the Denver area. They noted that the forced pumping of lethal wastes from the manufacture of nerve gases into deep wells at the Army's Rocky Mountain arsenal coincided with the occurrence of small quakes. After the Army suspended the waste-disposal program, the number of quakes declined sharply.