Fri, Jul 28, 2006 page4

• PRC probes controversy over quake

  SUPPRESSED? Experts say the 1976 Tangshan quake that killed at lease 240,000 was predictable, but some seismologists say that forecasts were ignored

  • DPA
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  Scientists have long seen the 1976 Tangshan earthquake as a nadir for seismology, but only recently has China begun to explore the painful possibility that officials sat on experts' predictions.

  The lack of any official warning led to an enormous casualty toll of at least 240,000 dead and 400,000 injured in the northern city of Tangshan, according to Chinese government statistics, though other estimates put the number of dead at up to 650,000.

  Experts from the China Earthquake Administration (CEA), such as Geng Qingguo (耿慶國) and Huang Xiangning (黃相寧), learned later "their predictions were ignored by the authorities," author Zhang Qingzhou (張慶洲) said.

  On July 14, 1976, Huang submitted a "very accurate" written prediction of an earthquake of magnitude 5 or above between July 15 and Aug. 5, said Zhang, who interviewed many surviving experts for his recent book Record of the Tangshan Warning.

  Another local seismologist, Tian Jinwu (田金武), told a meeting in Tangshan the same day that an earthquake measuring at least 7.0 on the Richter scale would hit the city within three weeks.

  "Although their equipment was out of date, when we go back to look at the history, we and the China Earthquake Administration have to admit that Tian made an accurate prediction at that time," said Zhang, 46, who lost two family members in the earthquake.

  International experts agree that the Tangshan earthquake was highly predictable.

  "Retrospectively there was enough data," said Gary Gibson, principal research seismologist at Australia's Seismology Research Centre, by telephone.

  "Precursors were recorded but not recognized," said Gibson, who has visited Tangshan several times.

  A 7.8-magnitude earthquake rocked the northern Chinese industrial city for 15 seconds in the early hours of July 28, 1976. Fifteen hours later, an aftershock measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale killed survivors of the first earthquake who were still trapped under rubble or inside buildings.

  The 1976 earthquake was so devastating because the epicenter was close to the surface and under an urban area, he said.

  The first public report on the earthquake was only issued three years later by the government's official Xinhua news agency, partly because of the aftermath of the chaotic communist fundamentalism during the Cultural Revolution.

  The ailing Mao Zedong (毛澤東), who died on Sept. 9, 1976, was still the nominal ruler of China in July 1976. But the "Gang of Four," led by Mao's wife, Jiang Qing (江青), controlled much of the state apparatus. Rival factions controlled other spheres within the government and the Communist Party.

  Xinhua journalist Xu Xuejiang (徐學江) wrote the first public report on the earthquake casualties in 1979.

  Xu's report gave the official death toll of 240,000 and was approved by the government to "publish the truth and quash the rumors," the Taiwan-based China Times on Wednesday quoted Xu as saying.

  The CEA called Xinhua many times to complain that Xu's report omitted an earlier assertion, by officials loyal to the Gang of Four, of "factional interference in the system" contributing to the disaster.

  Thirty years after the earthquake, it now seems that CEA leaders wanted to reinstate the phrase, already ideologically dated by 1979, to make themselves look less culpable.
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