Scientists predicted earthquake

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34133, 21 April 1976, Page 15

Scientists predicted earthquake

Z. Press Assn—Copyright > MOSCOW, April 20. Soviet Union scientists were aware of an impending earthquake this month in Central Asia five days before it happened, according to the official news agency’, Tass. It says that the scientists’ prediction came from observ;ing chemical and gas changes |in underground water in the (Republic of Uzbekistan, which was hit on the morning of April 8 by a strong tremor registering 8 on the Mercator scale of intensity (6.9 on the Richter scale). Damage and casualties were minimal because of the forewarning, Tass reports. Uzbek seismologists established a round-the-clock hydro-chemical forecasting service after the disastrous Tashkent earthquake of 1966, which left nearly 400,000 people homeless. At that time, a connection was first noticed between the gas chemical composition of abyssal waters and underground tremors. In the high-tremor areas, scientists drilled geological boreholes and artesian wells, submerging instruments into the wells to register changes in the water. Obituary Dr Grigory’ Podyapolsky, one of the Soviet Union’s most prominent dissidents, has died after a brain haemorrhage. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Dr Andrei Sakharov, has told Western journalists by telephone that Dr Podyapolsky, a 48-year-old geophysicist, was travelling by train with his wife to Kaluga, south of Moscow, when he collapsed. He was taken to hospital, but died after a second haemorrhage. Dr Sakharov added that the death of Dr Podyapolsky, who was believed to have taken a leading part in compiling the underground dissident “Chronicle of Current Events,” was a bitter blow to the human rights movement in the Soviet Union.— (Moscow).