The Press SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1937. Forecasting Earthquakes

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22004, 30 January 1937, Page 12

The Press SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1937. Forecasting Earthquakes

Major Edgar Booth, who is lecturer in physics and applied physics at Sydney University, has done the Dominion some service in so plainly and strongly urging upon people and Government the measures which will make it possible to predict the time and area of earthquakes and so to diminish the risk of disaster. His statement, which was reported in a special message to “ The Press ” from Westport yesterday, contained nothing essentially new; similar advice and similar information have been given to New Zealand before, by our own men of science as well as by their colleagues from oversea. But scarcely anything has been done. Seismological research has not been accelerated or extended; the system of making observations and collecting and collating records remains sketchy and produces, for want of equipment and staff, entirely inadequate results. The sentence in the latest issue of the Official Year Book is illuminating: “By means of the records from “the New Zealand seismograph stations [there “are 15 in the Dominion and surrounding islands] the Dominion Observatory carries out “ the determination of the epicentres of the “ principal New Zealand earthquakes; and with “ the aid of seismological reports from Apia and “Australian stations also undertakes the pro- “ visional determination of earthquake origins “in the south-west Pacific generally.” That the New Zealand system is so far developed as to be capable of giving such service as Major Booth describes, or is pursuing the researches which will help to make earthquake prediction still more accurate, nobody has been bold enough to suggest; and yet nobody should be bold enough to deny that such a development and such a pursuit would be of inestimable value. The sting of Major Booth’s statement lies in the fact that, if his estimate is reasonably close, New Zealand could be doing the necessary work for so small a cost as £SOOO or £6OOO in capital expenditure and £7OOO a year; but, when he said as much at the Science Congress in Auckland, he was “ told that the New Zea- “ land Government would probably not be pre- “ pared to spend the money required.” If this is true, it is shocking; if it is not true, it is at least necessary to ask what other reason can be preventing action. The need is obvious, there can be no difficulty of organisation and direction which would be hard to overcome, and the lesson has been written out in the heavy figures of the national budget. Hawke’s Bay cost the country £2,000,000 in grants and loans; but this sum by no means represents the full loss in real property and in trade and production, and the loss of 260 lives cannot be reckoned in such terms at all. This is the sort of disaster which the Government vs assured vt can do something and may do much to avoid, if it will follow expert advice and established practice in seismological method; and the risk of disaster in New Zealand is ever-present and stops at no local boundary. Those who ignore it or take it lightly accept a grave responsibility.