Seismologist tells regret, expectation of quake prediction

Source: Xinhua | 05-12-2009 11:59

by Yang Jianxiang

BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Sun Shihong was driving toward Kunming in southwest China's Yunnan Province when his handset beeped. It was about 2:34 p.m. on May 12, 2008.

The text message from a monitoring station in Qinghai Province said a 7.8-magnitude earthquake had just taken place in Sichuan, neighboring province of Yunnan. The epicenter, marked by longitude and latitude, was later identified as Wenchuan County.

A senior earthquake expert with the Beijing-based China Earthquake Administration (CEA), Sun had come to Yunnan a couple days earlier on a field assignment. "I was surprised, but not entirely," Sun recalled in an interview with Xinhua.

Sun was one of the nine chief predictors at CEA's China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC). He specialized in quake prediction based on data analysis. In 2006 he forecasted that there would be a strong earthquake within two or three years somewhere in southwest China.

"I was surprised it occurred in Wenchuan," Sun said with regret. Hardly a month before, he had been in Sichuan on a different research trip not far from Wenchuan.

"We failed to include that part of Sichuan in the danger zone, because there were few significant tremors or abnormal signs associated with the Wenchuan area," Sun said, "Looking back now, a year later, I still say it was impossible for us to make the prediction. We've done our job."