Jim Berkland is a retired geologist who worked many years for the U.S. Geological Survey. He was also the first County Geologist for Santa Clara County (in northern California) and was in that position for twenty-one years. He has published over fifty scientific papers. He has been a popular guest on many network news programs and talk shows on the subject of earthquake prediction. Berkland claims he has developed a method for predicting earthquakes, and on his web site and in a monthly newsletter, he lays out a detailed set of signs and precursors that he uses for his predictions. He also lists dozens of major earthquakes he claims to have predicted.
Berkland was suspended for 2 months from his Santa Clara County geology position in late October, 1989 after an article appeared in the Gilroy Dispatch (Gilroy, California) on October 13, one day before the start of Baseball's 1989 World Series. In an interview with the reporter, he made a prediction that a major earthquake would occur in the San Francisco Bay Area during the series. The Loma Prieta earthquake occurred onOctober 17, just before the start of the third game of the Series. Berkland claims that the government told him not to make any more predictions fearing mass panic.
Critics counter that the majority of other predictions he has made are much less specific than his 1989 prediction, and that he has since been unable to make a public prediction of that significance before an event.
Berkland predicted an earthquake for January 9-14, 2009 [1].
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