Report estimated quake death tolls to save lives
For a decade, seismologists have been able to generate fast, reliable estimates of the number of people likely to have been killed in an earthquake, to within a factor of two or three1. But these valuable tools are still not being used to save lives. Knowing whether 10 or 10,000 people might have died tells governments how much effort they should direct to rescuing people buried under rubble. Time is short — few individuals survive for more than three days. Fatality predictions are sent by e-mail within half an hour of a harmful quake anywhere in the world, for free, by the International Centre for Earth Simulation (ICES) Foundation and the US Geological Survey (USGS). Yet most officials, first responders and journalists are unaware of this.
This article argues that earthquake survivors could be rescued more quickly if the media communicated the number of likely fatalities from the outset
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