Old and Faithful Quake Warnings

Even with such sophisticated tools as strain gauges, laser beams and magnetometers to determine the buildup of dangerous stresses in the earth, scientists have had little success in forecasting major earthquakes. But as they have attempted to develop more complex quake-prediction devices, they may have been overlooking a simple one that predates man. A U.S. Government scientist reports that nature itself may provide a primitive early-warning system in the periodic eruptions of spectacular geysers like Yellowstone National Park's Old Faithful.

The concept was developed by Physicist John S. Rinehart of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who has been comparing the past activities of Old Faithful and two other famous geysers--Yellowstone's Riverside and Old Faithful in Calistoga, Calif.--with earthquake records dating back more than a century. He found that although geysers are commonly thought to erupt with clocklike regularity, their timing begins to change as the stresses that lead to quakes begin increasing in the earth around them; Yellowstone's Old Faithful speeds up any time from two to four years before a major quake within 60 miles of the geyser. It begins slowing down again shortly after the shock.

Geysers may even predict major quakes that will occur thousands of miles away. In the early 1960s, for example, Old Faithful was spewing forth once every 67 minutes. But in 1963 its rate increased to once every 65 1/2 minutes. Then in 1964 it abruptly slowed down again. To Rinehart, that variation in Old Faithful's timing seems intimately connected with Alaska's destructive Good Friday quake in 1964.

The great stresses that were building up in Alaska before the quake, Rinehart speculates, traveled through the earth at a rate of from three to six miles per day, eventually reaching as far south as Yellowstone National Park. There they put increasing pressure on the hot-water "plumbing" of Old Faithful. As a result, the geyser began spouting with increasing frequency until the quake finally relieved the strain, allowing Old Faithful to resume a more leisurely pace.

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