Talking Us Through the Shakes

Finding Lucile Jones on Sunday was a cinch. I circled Caltech until I spotted news vans parked outside a campus building. Black cords stretched from the vans to a second floor window. Upstairs, the cords connected to a row of cameras, and before this electronic firing line sat a woman in black slacks and red top, patiently fielding questions. Details varied, but the questions all boiled down to this: What now?

“My guess,” the woman was saying as I arrived, “is that we will have another six.”

That, I said, would be Dr. Jones.

Along with Caltech seismologist Kate Hutton, Lucie Jones has become to Southern California earthquakes what Vin Scully is to baseball. Even before the shaking stops, the news crews depart for Caltech, where Jones and Hutton provide scientific narrative for the latest big one. Hutton passes along the early bulletins--where was it centered, how strong? Jones, a specialist in earthquake predictions, follows with analysis. They remind me of NASA’s Mission Control. As “Houston” talks down astronauts, Jones and Hutton talk down a shaken populace.

Uh, Los Angeles. This is Caltech. We have epicenter. We have magnitude. We are go with an earthquake.

Uh, that’s a roger, Caltech. Let us know when it’s safe to leave the doorway.

Jones was in bed, nursing her baby, when the first earthquake hit at dawn. She stayed put, convinced that doorways are not safe places to ride out quakes. Hutton took a different tack. “The first thing I did,” she would tell me later, “was get up and stand in the doorway.”

That Jones and Hutton disagree on this basic first step says something about earthquake scientists in general. For all their seismo-gadgets and computer programs, they still don’t know much about earthquakes--which leaves plenty of room for disagreement. An example: On the morning of the 7.4 Yucca Valley extravaganza--it occurred in a place geologists were convinced could yield nothing greater than a 6.0--The Times reported that some scientists were beginning to re-examine even the most basic theories on what geological forces cause quakes.

“We don’t know what starts earthquakes,” Jones told me later. “We don’t know what stops them. We aren’t sure of the forces that drive them. . . . A lot of the fundamentals are missing.”

Scientists are hampered by the fact that most of the significant action takes place beyond their reach, deep below the surface. Also, while the Earth presumably has shaken for ages, reliable seismological records date back only a few hundred years. This makes any predictions based on statistical analysis of previous patterns somewhat chancy.

Still, Jones usually is willing to take a stab at setting the probability of aftershocks and future quakes, and as a result the temblor press corp regards her as a good sport. Her “predictions,” however, can be less than absolute. “When we tend to get a lot of earthquakes,” she said at one point Sunday, “we tend to get a lot of earthquakes.”

Jones played a role Sunday in an advisory that demonstrated the dangers in quake forecasts. It warned there was a greater than 50% chance of a 6.0 aftershock that day. When this failed to materialize, there was some grumbling by reporters and scientists. I saw the episode as a great moment in earthquake science--the perfect prediction. For implicitly, the controversial advisory had forecast, with almost equal weight, that there would not be a magnitude 6 aftershock, and thus had said nothing more than we already know: On any day in Southern California, there might be a big earthquake--and there might not be. Who knows?

For rock scientists, Jones and Hutton have achieved uncommon celebrity status. They are familiar faces. Viewers study their post-quake demeanor for unspoken clues: Are they rattled too? Is it worse than they can say? Strangers stop Hutton to ask: “Aren’t you the earthquake lady?” In one quake, Jones toted her baby to the briefings, and later received a public outpouring of support. People called to say they took comfort from seeing her after a quake with a child on her hip.

Both understand they play a part that transcends the passing along of scientific fact.

“People want information,” Hutton said. “And it doesn’t really matter if it’s irrelevant information.”

No, it doesn’t really matter. We will tune in and listen for the epicenter and the magnitude, wait for the foggy forecasts of aftershock possibilities--even though none of it can change what already has happened. Somehow, it’s the mere presence of these scientists that provides the comfort: The seismologists have not bolted, the city has not sunk into the sea. We have made it through another one, and all that’s left now is the talking.