(Clearwisdom.net) In face of the unprecedented tragedy, many Chinese people wonder, "Wasn't there any advance warning of the earthquake? Why didn't the Earthquake Administration issue any warnings? With all the technology in use today, wasn't it possible to predict such a major earthquake in advance? Had anyone predicted this one?"
During a press conference held by China's State Department on May 13, 2008, two reporters asked similar questions of a spokesperson from China Earthquake Administration and of the earthquake experts. A reporter for the Singapore Lianhe Zaobao (a Chinese daily newspaper in Singapore) asked, "Regarding such a huge earthquake, had the officials received any pre-warning?"
Researcher Zhang Xiaodong, Associate Director of the China Earthquake Networks Center, did not answer the question directly. Instead, he merely stated, "Earthquake prediction is a challenge worldwide."
A reporter for the Chengdu Economic Daily asked the question in a more direct way, "Had the China Earthquake Networks Center seen any pre-warnings for this earthquake? Or, regarding the abnormal behavior of underground water and animals, as we the common citizens refer to, or some earth movement parameters, if these parameters had not reached the limits of issuing earthquake warnings, I want to ask what are the conditions that justify a warning? This time, were there any earthquake pre-warnings that we could have noticed? What signs had been seen?"
Spokesperson Zhang Hongwei from China Earthquake Administration avoided directly answering the Chengdu Economic Daily reporter's two questions. Zhang Hongwei spoke much about the difficulty of predicting earthquakes.
When the Lianhe Zaobao reporter revealed, "We have received word from seven Sichuan Earthquake Administration employees, and their dear ones said they had observed omens of the earthquake several days before it happened. However, the earthquake administration put a prohibition on this information, citing the excuse of "maintaining social stability before the Olympic Games." Zhang Hongwei replied firmly "this reasoning in unfounded" without launching a thorough investigation into this matter.
Both spokesperson Zhang Hongwei and China Earthquake Networks Center's Associate Director Zhang Xiaodong used the same muddled lingo to refuse acknowledging that certain individuals had observed signs of the coming earthquake, and that some experts had submitted warnings about the impending disastrous quake.
On an Internet blog on May 20, it became obvious that the Chinese earthquake officials muddied the waters even more: Regarding the accusation that officials had done something to suppress the earthquake predictions, Che Shi, Associate Director of Earthquake Monitoring and Predicting Division of China's Earthquake Administration denied having received any advance warning. He stated this when interviewed by a reporter from the China Seismological Information website. The reporter, though, clearly indicated that China Earthquake Administration had not made short-term and impending earthquake predictions. The official added that since the beginning of 2008, the China Earthquake Administration has received twenty-six potential alerts regarding short-term and impending earthquake predictions, but none of them was correct.
However, the facts indicate the opposite. Besides "the words of the seven Sichuan Earthquake Administration employees," as indicated by Lianhe Zaobao reporter Li Shihui, a visiting researcher from the Key Laboratory of Engineering Geomechanics of the China Science of Academy revealed on the internet the same evening the quake occurred that earthquake expert Geng Qingguo had made accurate predictions about the Wenchuan Earthquake.
In 2006, based on the relationship between drought and earthquakes, Geng predicted that an earthquake of a magnitude greater than 7 would happen in the Aba area (of Sichuan Province). On April 26 and 27, 2008, members of the "Special Committee for Natural Disasters Prediction," under the Chinese Geophysical Society following a discussion, submitted their findings in writing and predicted that "For one year, from between May 2008 to April 2009, there is still a need to pay attention to the possibility that a 6-7 magnitude earthquake may happen in the area south of Lanzhou City and near the areas bordering Sichuan Province, Gansu Province, and Qinghai Province." The written prediction had been submitted to the China Earthquake Administration on April 30, 2008 in a confidential letter. Furthermore, Geng Qingguo, taking into consideration the combination of strong magnetic storms clearly proposed, "the earthquake danger zone of having a temblor of 7 magnitude or greater should be around May 8 (± 10 days)." The three important elements for earthquake prediction - magnitude, time, and location - were clearly stated in this prediction.
On May 14, host Yang Rui of the "Wenchuan May 12 Earthquake," an English program on Channel 9 of the CCTV (China Central Television) called an expert to comment. The expert was Mr. Chen Yiwen, an advisor to the Special Committee for Natural Disasters Prediction under the Chinese Geophysical Society. Chen, over the phone, responded in English that the China Earthquake Administration should be unequivocally held responsible!
Members of the Special Committee for Natural Disaster Predictions had submitted three medium-term predictions to the China Earthquake Administration regarding the likelihood of a strong earthquake in the Wenchuan area. On May 3, 2008, Chen personally sent another prediction about the possibility of a strong earthquake in the Wenchuan area to the China Earthquake Administration. According to Chen, there were also other individuals who had made predictions about a possible strong earthquake in the Wenchuan area. However, these serious scientific warnings had been ignored.
That same day, Boxun News, a website based outside China, carried an article, "Shocking News: Sichuan Earthquake Had Been Accurately Predicted, But the Government Decided Not to Issue an Earthquake Warning."
The article stated, "According to privately revealed information from some experts in the China Earthquake Administration who risk their lives for telling this information, before the quake happened, certain China Earthquake Administration experts had made rather accurate predictions about this earthquake in the course of their established work procedures. They had also reported this prediction to the State Department and asked State Department officials to issue an earthquake warning. Information available on the Internet makes it plain that the Chinese regime's decision-making section had made a comprehensive evaluation about possible damage of a magnitude 6 earthquake in the Sichuan area. The evaluation let it be known that not issuing an earthquake warning was more beneficial to the regime than issuing the warning, and that the regime could withstand the consequence of loss of lives and property by not issuing a warning for a 6-magnitude earthquake."
Thirty-two years ago, 240,000 people instantly lost their lives in the Tangshan earthquake! Authorities then declared that it was an unpredictable and unpreventable, sudden earthquake. When Tangshan writer Zhang Qingzhou published the book "The Tangshan Warning - The Story of Not Issuing an Advance Warning of the July 28, 1976 Earthquake," we discovered that many seismologists had accurately predicted the earthquake and submitted a high-risk warning that "a strong quake is about to happen" to CCP authorities.
This huge disaster happened because even then the many political entities were too wrapped in saving their political positions and did not issue an earthquake warning. Qinglong County, which is only 65 kilometers from downtown Tangshan, became the only exception avoiding peril - because the local leaders, risking the loss of their political status, after learning of an impending earthquake from the seismologists, told citizens in the whole county about the coming earthquake and evacuated all the people. No one in that county died during Tangshan Earthquake, which was called "the Qinglong Miracle."
If the CCP regime had been able to act like the Qinglong County leaders and issued a warning, and organized and evacuated the Tangshan people in time, 240,000 people may not have lost their lives. Rather than saying so many lives were lost in a natural calamity, it is more accurate to say that many of them had actually died in the regime's manmade disaster!
Unfortunately, what happened with the Sichuan earthquake this year can be said to be a replay of the officials' irresponsible actions during the Tangshan earthquake.
Even though officials at the China Earthquake Administration staunchly insisted that they had not received any earthquake warning signs or predictions, and that the Sichuan earthquake was unpredictable and happened suddenly, we believe otherwise. Several experts point out the existence of evidence pointing out the likelihood of a quake about to happen and had submitted their findings to the China Earthquake Administration and other appropriate branches of the government.
The Communist regime was fully aware there would be an earthquake in Sichuan Province, but fearing that issuance of an earthquake warning would affect its so-called "social stability," the officials did not issue any warning. The authorities merely took preventative measures in the limited areas surrounding nuclear facilities.
Had the ruling officials shown courage and concern for their fellow citizens and been able to act like the Qinglong County officials decades earlier, putting the people's lives and property as priorities, rather than the stability of CCP rule, the death of so many people could have been avoided!
Warnings and evacuations would have greatly reduced the death toll! Merely rescuing the survivors and mourning the loss of life is inadequate.
