When it comes to earthquakes, about the only sure thing is that the first century of seismic strides won’t hold a candle to upcoming third-millennium milestones, thanks to high-octane techno-tools. The marvels of supercomputing are already catapulting quake prediction, protection and preparedness efforts from the era of enlightenment to the era of empowerment, and it is only 2006.
Quake experts, not knowing when a forceful temblor will strike, aren’t sitting around waiting for any seismic utopia. On the contrary, they are using the centenary of San Francisco’s April 18, 1906, cataclysm to call for bigger bucks for bigger efforts to take some of the punch out of the next Big One.