M A S T E R P A G E
Newspaper Accounts
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Volume 1
“News of Geologic Importance”
Issue 1
From the
Dallas Morning News,
July 22, 1990
Prediction prompts residents
to wonder, worry
From the
Arkansas Democrat
,
November 29, 1989
New Madrid
tremors due,
forecast says
MEMPHIS, TN—A climatologist who pre-
dicted the San Francisco earthquake Oct. 17
says the New Madrid Fault region could be in
for serious tremors next year.
Iben Browning is a Tijeras, NM, scientist
who develops long-range weather forecasts
for businesses. He bases his quake predictions
on the theory that tidal forces of the Sun and
Moon produce stress in the Earth.
Browning, an inventor with a doctorate in
physiology, has studied weather for 30 years,
but does not publish his findings in scientific
journals. He is better known in business cir-
cles, and publishes a monthly newsletter. His
New Madrid forecast is based on a 179-year
cycle of tidal forces last felt in 1811.
Browning said the conditions will be ripe for
tremors Dec. 3, 1990.
“The configuration will be the same as it
was the year the original earthquake went
off,” Browning said Monday.
That isn’t to say tidal forces would cause
a major earthquake next year south of St.
Louis to a point north of Memphis, he said.
Experts have predicted a major
earthquake in the New Madrid zone could
cause major damage to match that of the
recent California quake.
Dr. Arch Johnston, director of the Center
for Earthquake Research and Information at
Memphis State University, said the tidal force
theory is backed by some scientific data, but
isn’t conclusive by any means.
THE NORTHEAST ARKANSAS TOWN
OF 25,000—a county seat with Air Force
base and several small industries—is
perched directly over the site of [Iben
Browning’s
earthquake]
prediction.
Knowing what lies beneath the flat delta
farmland clearly makes some uneasy.
“Our fire chief told our firemen they
can’t take a vacation. Some already asked,”
said Mr. Edwards, a Fire Department lieu-
tenant. “He said we could ship our families
out, but we’re staying. It was said kind of in
a jest, but I think that everyone is actually
pretty serious about this.”
One geophysicist studying Dr. Brown-
ing’s methods says the projection can’t be
ignored because he had predicted other
earthquakes—including last October’s Cali-
fornia temblor.
But most experts dismiss the warning.
They acknowledge that there is a 50-50
chance that a destructive quake will hit the
fault by decade’s end, but they say the pro-
jection lacks scientific validity.
“It seems like people are becoming wor-
ried about it for no reason at all,” said Dr.
Brian Mitchell, chairman of the Department
of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at St.
Louis University.
At the center of the furor is an ailing 72-
year-old inventor from Tijeras, NM, who
has spent much of the last 20 years offering
clients advice on the esoteric topic of future
world climates.
Dr. Browning declined to be inter-
viewed. But his daughter, Evelyn Browning
Garriss, said her father began forming his
wide-ranging theories while working at
Sandia Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM.
Dr. Browning has a doctorate in biology
from the University of Texas, and Ms.
Garriss said his interests range across many
fields. She said he has been a test pilot and
developed weaponry and TV technology.
Ms. Garriss said the ideas that spawned
her father’s latest projection arose from
research for the U.S. government on peace-
ful uses for atomic bombs. While studying
how explosions affect the atmosphere, she
said, he became fascinated with volcanoes.
He found that volcanoes are triggered by the
same gravitational pulls that cause ocean
tides, and he “discovered that the same forces
that trigger volcanoes also trigger
earthquakes,” she said.
That theory produced his projection of an
earthquake on the New Madrid Fault. Al-
though rejected by most scientists, Dr.
Browning’s new warning has gained attention
from many in a region already worried about
the New Madrid Fault’s potential for
destruction.
Some earthquake-preparedness efforts
have been underway for six years because
seismologists warned in the early 1980s that a
temblor measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale
had a 50-50 chance of occurring before 2000.
Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, and the cities of
Carbondale, IL, Memphis, TN, and St. Louis
have approved seismic building codes in the
past two years.
Since 1984, seven states and the Federal
Emergency Management Agency have de-
veloped a regional emergency response sys-
tem through the Central U.S. Earthquake
Consortium in Memphis.
Most state officials place little stock in
the prediction, but they hesitate to reject it for
fear of encouraging complacency about real
threats posed by the fault. Mississippi
officials are accelerating preparedness plan-
ning. And in Illinois, officials are forming a
plan to address panic that might result if any
detectable tremors hit the region near the
predicted date, said Tom Zimmerman, the
state’s emergency planning director.
To further soothe regional concerns, state
emergency officials want scientific experts to
formally evaluate the prediction. Several state
officials said they have asked the National
Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council,
based in California, to address the issue.
The council of pre-eminent earth scien-
tists has turned down the request.
“They don’t want to glorify the
prediction,” Dr. Mitchell said.
