LARRY PARK

[January 5th, 2005] If the tsunami-scarred residents of Southern India had had a chance to consider the credentials of Larry Park, they might not have been so quick to run when he predicted another big one last week.

Park, who lives in rural Washington County, touched off a roguish wave of panic Dec. 30 when he passed his tip to a filmmaker acquaintance, who passed it to India's National Disaster Management division, which spread it by loudspeaker. As a result, residents of coastal India--where thousands died in Dec. 26's earthquake-fueled tsunami--jammed roads, climbed roofs and even reportedly left their hospital beds in desperate attempts to flee.

The Indian science minister, who apparently had been left out of the loop, subsequently called Park's warning "unscientific" and "hogwash," noting that no one can predict earthquakes.

WW was unable to track down Park before deadline, but when reached by the Associated Press on Dec. 30, he was unapologetic. "There is a good chance of a quake coming, yes," he confidently told the AP. "We've got a few days' window."

Park's confidence in the face of what, thankfully, continues to constitute international failure may not be unusual. "My whole career, I've worked with the best and the brightest," Park previously boasted in a 2003 interview published on the website goldismoney.com. According to Park, he parlayed a two-year community-college degree in electronics into a "senior design engineering position" with Intel before "accepting a position at a leading massively parallel superconductor company. Today I'm doing research and consulting at leading high-tech companies in the Silicon Forest."

But WW was unable to confirm his claims with either Intel or Tektronix, the only "leading massively parallel superconductor company" in the Silicon Forest that came to mind. And scientific sources in Park's purported area of expertise, earthquakes, were quick to point out, after last week's failed prediction, that they had never heard of him.

Park's prediction was not the first time rural Washington County has been at the epicenter of earthquake hysteria.

In June 1993, the Forest Grove School District evacuated 150 students from a structurally shaky elementary-school building after "earthquake researcher" David Farnsworth, using dubious technology, forecast a moderate quake for Western Oregon. It never came. No word on whether Farnsworth shared that technology with Park.