This book portrays the history, causes and future of large earthquakes in the US and traces the evolution of government policy to deal with it. It reviews the range of human actions that can be taken to manage or lessen quake losses and presents a review of the current technology to predict quakes.

This book portrays the history, causes and future of large earthquakes in the US and traces the evolution of government policy to deal with it. It reviews the range of human actions that can be taken to manage or lessen quake losses and presents a review of the current technology to predict quakes.

Jack and Mark build an airship and head North, hoping to find a rare plant that grows only in Alaska. But a freak earthquake causes a chunk of the Earth, along with our protagonists, to fly into outer space.

From 1966 to 1976, four large earthquakes shook the Bohai Bay rift basin of Northeast China. This prompted the Chinese to launch one of the world’s largest social and science experiments into earthquake prediction that would engage tens of thousands of common people. The climax of this came in February 1975 where a prediction was made hours before the Haicheng earthquake struck. Evacuation of the city of Yingkou and some rural districts saved thousands of lives. The Chinese were jubilant, believing they had cracked the earthquake prediction conundrum. Eighteen months later, however, on the 28th July, 1976, jubilation turned to despair when a great earthquake flattened the large industrial city of Tangshan resulting in 250,000 to 650,000 casualties. This book describes the geological, technical, political and sociological backgrounds to the Haicheng prediction success and the Tangshan prediction failure. Ahead of the Tangshan earthquake, Chinese seismologists had accumulated significant information that suggested an earthquake was imminent and came close to making a prediction. With improved knowledge and vastly improved ability to accumulate, consolidate and analyse data, this book suggests that Tangshan could have been predicted today using techniques developed in China in that epic decade of discovery. Building on these insights, it also offers a viable future pathway towards earthquake predictions that combines the insights and organisation of the 1966-1976 Chinese prediction program with modern technologies, in order to facilitate data gathering, interpretation and sharing.

Reprint. Originally published: New York: Free Press, c2006.

Ranger, the time-traveling golden retriever with search-and-rescue training, helps two new friends survive the Great San Francisco Earthquake! Ranger travels to San Francisco and meets Lily Chen. She was sent from China to America to work as a young servant, but she dreams of studying to be a doctor. When the Great Earthquake hits, Ranger arrives in time to rescue Lily from falling beams in the mission house where she lives. Together they flee to safety, stopping to help another girl, May Wong, save her little brother from the family's collapsed market. Lily and May try to make their way through the ruined city with Ranger at their side. But can they escape crumbling buildings and raging fires, all while facing anti-Chinese discrimination?