Midwest Girds for Quake on New Madrid Fault : Seismology: A scientist’s warning that a temblor could strike Dec. 2 has shaken the Heartland. Insurance sales are up and the National Guard has scheduled drills.

A scientist’s warning that an earthquake could strike the Midwest on Dec. 2 seems to have shaken the seismic confidence of people in the Heartland.

It was Iben Browning, a climatologist who claims to have forecast the Bay Area quake of last Oct. 17 but whose theories are disputed by most seismologists, who made the reckoning.

Along the New Madrid Fault, the example of the Northern California quake, coupled with Browning’s projection, has raised awareness of earthquakes and the risks they bring.

Insurance sales are up, a school district has tentatively canceled two days of classes, and National Guard units in two states have scheduled drills for that week.

The fault, which roughly follows the Mississippi River from Mississippi to Illinois, may not be as well known as the San Andreas Fault in California, but it commands respect among earthquake experts.

The last sizable quake on the fault was in 1895, but that’s not the one people talk about. The Big One--actually, the Big Three or Four--occurred in 1811 and 1812, when several quakes centered in New Madrid, Mo., rocked much of the eastern half of the nation.

Those quakes rang church bells in Washington, D.C., and are said to have made the Mississippi River run backward. Their magnitudes have been estimated at about 8.

The quakes are part of the folklore of the region. “It’s Our Fault,” a T-shirt proclaims. But until recently, that was about as far as it went.

“We talked about it for years,” said Sheriff Jake Rone of New Madrid County, “but we never really got serious about it until this thing happened.”

The thing that has people talking up and down the New Madrid Fault is a Browning’s projection that there could be a major quake in the region on Dec. 2 or Dec. 3.

Browning, 72, an inventor and climate consultant from Tijeras, N. M., based his forecast on a convergence of tidal forces, which he believes can put stress on faults. He says it is possible, but not certain, that such a quake will happen.

Browning says he predicted the Bay Area quake last fall by using the same method. He says he warned a group of executives in San Francisco, seven days before the quake.

Although seismologists do not back Browning’s reckoning, a school district in Mississippi County, Ark., has tentatively canceled classes Dec. 3 and Dec. 4, a Monday and Tuesday. (Dec. 2 falls on a Sunday.)

Insurance agents in Arkansas say that sales of quake coverage picked up noticeably after the California temblor, and again, dramatically, after Browning’s projection became public in March.

The director of Indiana’s Emergency Management Agency said he doesn’t necessarily believe the projection, but he doesn’t disbelieve it, either.

“I basically have taken the position we are not going to ignore this prediction,” Jerry Hauer said.

He also is chairman of the Central United States Earthquake Consortium, which includes emergency directors from states that would be hit hardest by a New Madrid quake--Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee.

The consortium has taken no action to prepare for a December quake, and Hauer said that Browning probably will be proved wrong.

Just in case he isn’t, Hauer said: “If we have to schedule National Guard drills during the month of December, why not schedule them that week?”

Officials in Missouri and Arkansas have already done just that. Both are planning earthquake drills for the first few days of December.

“If something does happen, we’ll be there,” Maj. Cissy Lashbrook of the Arkansas guard said. “If nothing happens, people will see we’re prepared for this type of emergency.”

Seismologists have mixed feelings about Browning’s forecast. It’s not that they don’t believe there will be a quake; they just don’t believe it can be forecast so specifically.

As close as seismologists can pinpoint it, there’s a 40% to 63% chance of a severe quake--of about magnitude 6--occurring on the New Madrid Fault in the next 15 years.

“Yes, people ought to be prepared,” said Klaus Jacob, a senior research scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. “They should be prepared on Dec. 3 and 4, but they should also be prepared today and tomorrow, and Dec. 1, and next year.”

“Earthquakes don’t care about predictions,” he said. “And people shouldn’t worry about predictions; they should worry about earthquakes.”