Detailed maps from 2007 showing fault lines
Ten months ago a little read scientific report was compiled by seismologists from China, Europe and the US. Today that report makes uneasy reading. For the report which was outlined in the July 2007 edition of Tectonics warned that Beichuan was “ripe for a major earthquake”. A report in the National Geographic said the scientists issued a warning following studies of satellite images and on-the-ground examinations of active faults in Sichuan Province for more than a decade. "The faults are sufficiently long to sustain a strong ground-shaking earthquake, making them potentially serious sources of regional seismic hazard," the report read. They concluded that clashing tectonic forces were growing in Beichuan, “ready to burst in an explosion of seismic energy”.
The researchers charted the active faults on multicolored maps of Beichuan, which now turn out to be the epicenter of the recent earthquake. "As far as I know, this is the only investigation of these active faults," said study co-author Michael Ellis of the Center for Earthquake Research and Information at the University of Memphis in Tennessee. There is little reason to believe Chinese officials were aware of the July 2007 report, or that it would have made much difference if they had been. "We had certainly identified the potential of these active faults," Ellis said. "But that information was effectively locked in an academic journal." The magnitude 7.9 quake that struck on May 12th almost entirely levelled parts of Sichuan Province. Chinese officials today estimated that the death toll would reach 50,000 and that nearly five million people are homeless.
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