Experts Warn of Quake Complacency

Federal funding is needed to help pinpoint the hazards of an earthquake that inevitably will hit the San Diego region, scientists said in testimony before a congressional subcommittee.

Thomas Rockwell, a professor of geology at San Diego State University, and other scientists appearing Monday before the House subcommittee on science said San Diego actually risks widespread destruction in even a moderate earthquake.

The congressional oversight field hearing, chaired by Rep. George Brown (D-Riverside), was conducted in the San Diego Convention Center in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America.

Recent studies of the Rose Canyon fault show that a powerful quake “is not only possible but inevitable,” Rockwell said. “We now know that the Rose Canyon fault is a potentially dangerous fault and will produce a damaging earthquake in the future. . . . However, we don’t know when.”

Rockwell said the public’s pervasive but misguided perception that San Diego is “seismically safe” is due to the absence of strong quakes in San Diego during the past century.

However, research during the last decade has revealed seismic activity in past millennia along a network of related faults traversing the city from Mt. Soledad to downtown.

Thomas L. Henyey, executive director of the Southern California Earthquake Center at the USC, noted that the probability of a major earthquake striking on the southern San Andreas fault in the next 30 years has been set as high as 60%.

The likelihood of a major quake on the San Jacinto fault is 40% over the same period.

However, Henyey said no estimates have been given for the other 87 active faults now recognized in Southern California.

Some of the faults, such as the Sierra Madre, Newport-Inglewood, Palos Verdes and Rose Canyon, present a potentially more hazardous situation for metropolitan Southern California, he said.

Nearly all funding for quake research comes from the federal government, and Henyey estimated that funding for studies in Southern California was $7.5 million this year. But, he said, federal funding under the Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program “stacks up as woefully inadequate.”