FARSHORES NEWS :.

MAN'S EAR IS EARTHQUAKE DETECTOR

  Posted Oct 19.04

Original headline: Man hears ringing in ear right before earthquakes strike

A Taichung County resident who has experienced tinnitus before earthquakes, including Friday's magnitude 7 temblor, should be studied by the Central Weather Bureau and medical practitioners, an ear-nose-throat specialist advised yesterday.

Lee Cheng-chi said on Saturday that he has experienced tinnitus in his right ear before strong earthquakes since the September 21, 1999 quake caused serious damage in his hometown and throughout central Taiwan.

The tinnitus - a ringing in the ears not caused by an external noise source - surfaces before any quake of a magnitude of 4 or higher on the Richter scale and then stops as soon as the earthquake ends, Lee was quoted as saying by Apple Daily in a report published yesterday.

The Taichung County resident had a ringing sound in his right ear on Friday morning, just four hours before the strongest earthquake since the 9-21 disaster rocked Taiwan, and he sent an e-mail to the Central Weather Bureau to warn earthquake specialists there.

"I can feel that an earthquake is coming, but I can't predict its scale and epicenter. I only pass the information to an acquaintance at the weather bureau because I don't want to be viewed as a man with supernatural powers," Lee was quoted as saying in the report.

Tien Huei-shun, an ENT doctor at Taichung's Veterans General Hospital, suggested that Lee's case was similar to the bizarre case of American Charlotte King, and was worth further exploration.

King, an Oregonian, is able to "hear" the earth and discovered that she would get an earache and even severe migraines when earthquakes of 7 or higher on the Richter Scale were about to hit. Her service as a human earthquake warning system helped coin the term "The Charlotte King Effect."

She has been studied for 14 years by scientific and earthquake research institutes in the U.S., which tried to produce models imitating her sensitivity to signals indicating earthquakes were imminent. Scientists found that she was particularly sensitive to electromagnetic fields and the radiation they gave off prior to large quakes.

Some scientists continue to hope that by studying King's signals, they could obtain real-time warnings of large earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Her Web site includes a story describing her many accurate predictions.

Tien believes that Lee may have the same predictive powers and suggested it would be worthwhile for local weather forecasters and researchers at hospitals to study Lee as American scientists studied King.

Lee said he sometimes receives responses to his e-mails from Central Weather Bureau officials who told him his warning would be taken into account.

But Kuo Kai-wen, director of the CWB's earthquake prediction center, explained that they could not attach importance to Lee's warnings because "an earthquake prediction must include time, scale, epicenter and intensity."

Lee' warnings have been limited to simple predictions that an earthquake was coming, Kuo said, which from a strictly scientific point of view could only be described as "coincidences."

National Central University professor Ma Guo-feng nevertheless encouraged Lee to further explore his predictive powers.

"A study on such an ability by compiling statistics on the predictions from now on could add value to the study of when earthquakes might occur," Ma was quoted as saying in the report.

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