THE  PAKISTAN  EARTHQUAKE

Latest Update:   January 18, 2006

ON OCTOBER 8, 2005, PARTS OF PAKISTAN AND SURROUNDING AREAS

WERE DEVASTATED BY THE FOLLOWING POWERFUL EARTHQUAKE:

2005/10/08 03:50:41 34.53N 73.58E 26.0 7.6 Pakistan

(U.S. National Earthquake Information Service data)

       News reports have stated that the earthquake claimed some 90,000 lives.  And harsh winter conditions in the area are reportedly costing additional lives as people whose homes were destroyed are being forced to live outdoors.

       Towards the end of July, 2005 it became necessary to begin making major updates to the computer programs which are being used to generate the data on this Web site’s Data.html Web page.  That effort was finally completed on January 17 of 2006.  While the work was in progress it was not possible to generate any new data or to update the Data.html Web page.  However earthquake warning type signal data were still being collected during that time.  And those data were recently evaluated using the updated computer programs.

       Table 1 on this Web page shows what would have been displayed on that Data.html Web page on October 7, 2005, the day before the earthquake had it been possible to update the Web page at that time.

Tables 2 and 3 on this Web page show how those types of data can be displayed using a newly developed format.

       It is my opinion that these table data provide clear evidence that earthquake warning type signals being detected days, weeks, and months before October 8 were pointing to approaching seismic activity in the Pakistan area.

       If the computer programs used to evaluate the warning signals were more advanced and accurate or if other earthquake researchers had been able to determine that an earthquake was about to occur there then it might have been possible to pinpoint its location and warn people about its approach.

       TABLE 1  shows what would have been displayed on this Web site's Data.html Web page on October 7, 2005, the day before the Pakistan earthquake had it been possible to update the Web page at that time.

       If you scroll down to the 73 E longitude listings (+73) you will find quite a few earthquakes listed there which have longitudes between 67 E and 77 E.  Large numbers of earthquakes listed like that for some area is often a clear indicator that strong seismic activity could be expected somewhere in the area.  Even more striking information of that type can be found farther down the page in TABLE 2.

       TABLE 2  presents the data using a different format.  In this case the data evaluation computer programs were instructed to list only earthquakes which had longitudes between 68 E and 78 E.  And they were told to display multiple warning signal time windows for earthquakes in that range instead of ones for just a single time window.

       The 35,000 earthquakes in the database file used to generate all three of these tables were ones which occurred between the beginning of 1990 and October 7, 2005, the day before the deadly Pakistan earthquake.

       Each of the time windows in this table represents an averaging together of as many as several hundred warning signals detected during three month periods of time which ended on the dates listed in the table.  So in effect each of those groups of earthquakes shows how many earthquakes would have appeared within the 68 E and 78 E longitude range on the main Data.html Web page table had the table been generated on the stated day.  To produce “before and after” information, time periods up to December 25, 2005 have been included in the table.

       If you scroll down to the weeks and months before October 8, 2005 and then scroll slowly upwards you can see that there is a gradual increase in the number of earthquakes listed for each time period within the 68 E to 78 E longitude range.  For example, there were only 2 of those earthquakes in the time window which ended on May 12 versus 14 in the one ending October 7.  And the number in each time window gradually decreases for the time periods after the October 8 earthquake occurred.

       It is my opinion that those table data clearly show that warning signals were pointing ever more strongly to possible significant seismic activity for the Pakistan area as the day of the earthquake approached.