Funding for Frontline is provided by this station and other public television stations nationwide and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Tonight on Frontline, it will be a natural disaster which could devastate the entire country.
We know inevitably we're going to have recurrences of major earthquakes in the Bay Area and that people are going to be killed.
Scientists predict a major catastrophic earthquake in California in the next 20 years.
Can the U.S. prepare for a killer quake?
How do you truly prepare for enough injured to fill every emergency hospital bed in the free world?
Tonight, the earthquake is coming.
From the network of public television stations, a presentation of KCTS Seattle, WNET New York, WPBT Miami, WTVS Detroit, and WGBH Boston.
This is Frontline with Judy Woodruff.
Good evening. Think about earthquakes and you think of California, but some 75 million Americans in 32 states live on or near active fault lines.
In fact, the greatest quake in U.S. history happened early in the 19th century in Missouri, creating two lakes and altering the course of the Mississippi River.
For centuries, earthquakes have been the subject of superstition, myth, and movies. But tonight's earthquake story is all too real.
Because before the end of this century, a major earthquake is in fact expected to hit California.
It will affect millions of us wherever we live. As producer Irv Dresden reports, the earthquake is coming.
Good morning. Thank you for calling the U.S. Geological Survey's earthquake information update.
We recorded 28 earthquakes in northern and central California larger than magnitude 1.0 during the last 24 hours.
The University of California seismographic stations at Berkeley recorded a strong earthquake off the coast of California northwest of Eureka.
We have recorded 31 earthquakes in northern and central California larger than magnitude 1.0 during the last 24 hours.
This earthquake is an aftershock of the magnitude 5.8 earthquake. The Berkeley magnitude for this event is 5.6 on erector scale.
This earthquake was sharply felt in the Berkeley area and was felt widely throughout the San Francisco Bay area.
The largest of these was a magnitude 4.4 earthquake located southeast of Coalinga, California.
This earthquake was located at Parkfield. This epicenter was located along the Calaveras Fault.
It was located approximately 20 kilometers northwest of Palm Springs. The magnitude for this event is 3.9 on erector scale.
The largest aftershock was magnitude 5.3. We have recorded 465 earthquakes. The epicenter was located northwest of San Diego.
We've recorded two aftershocks. The earthquake was followed by a few aftershocks. On erector scale.
We have recorded 45 earthquakes.
Take away the earthquakes. You take away the mountains. You take away the long linear valleys that most of us live in.
California would be a vastly less interesting place to live, and I'm not sure most of us would be here.
Were it not for the very interesting topography and the local climates that it produces,
and the beauty of this state is almost entirely due to the tectonic activity. You can't have one without the other.
Beauty and the beast.
Let's hear it for earthquakes.
Yes, that's right. I believe if you put the question of earthquakes to a vote in the state of California,
and they had to choose between the beauty of the natural setting here and the threat of earthquakes,
they would vote for earthquakes. They would take the beautiful setting and take the risk that goes with it.
The risk is a natural disaster unlike any other in the nation's history.
A disaster that can't be prevented or even predicted.
A disaster that tells us something not only about nature, but about human nature.
It's very pleasant here, and I wouldn't live any other place.
The scientists say there's going to be a major earthquake in California, just a matter of time.
They've been saying that since the day I came here in 1946, and I'm still waiting. So far, it hasn't happened.
Don't believe everything the scientists tell you.
Get under the bed.
Yes. Yes.
When one happens, you wait for the next one.
It was the one that knocked me out of bed at four o'clock in the morning, but I crawled on my hands and knees,
and I got under a table because I was waiting for a couple more.
I mean, why do you live here?
I love it. I love California. I just spent two and a half years in New York.
No one knows exactly what a major earthquake would do in California.
An earthquake happening in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It can only be imagined as in these exercises.
How do you feel about earthquakes?
Well, I tell you, I have a lot of fun during an earthquake.
My refrigerator at one time was in the living room, and now it's in the bedroom.
Do you remember that? The earthquake, put it over there, and it's very handy.
I open it right by my bed, and I eat, and I have a good time.
Yeah, earthquakes are not bad.
The odds aren't good. A better than 50-50 chance that within the next 30 years,
Californians will be climbing from the wreckage of a devastating earthquake.
I am very much concerned.
In fact, my daughter thinks that we're going to roll into the sea, Los Angeles.
In other words, it's coming up that my daughter really feels.
In other words, she thinks that we're really going to Los Angeles, going into the sea.
How do you feel about it?
Well, I can't swim.
Precisely where and when a great earthquake will strike remains a mystery, but not why.
In California, the biggest reason is the San Andreas Fault, 650 miles long and up to a mile wide.
It dominates the landscape and divides the state along two constantly shifting plates of the Earth's surface.
And here in California, the North American Plate, which begins just over the mountains here in the Mojave Desert
and runs all the way to Iceland, is moving southeastward this way relative to the Pacific Plate,
which goes all the way from where we're standing here, the San Andreas Fault, over the mountains,
all the way to just offshore Japan, offshore New Zealand.
And those plates are moving every year horizontally relative to each other, and they're moving at about two inches a year.
And since the faults have a, the boundary breaks, the fractures have a certain amount of strength,
they can stand the accumulation of a certain amount of strain and movement,
but eventually that strength is overcome and they snap.
And the snapping is what generates the waves in the Earth that produce the earthquake.
Is it inevitable that there will be a catastrophic earthquake in California, sooner or later?
Yeah, it's inevitable.
No doubt about it?
No doubt in my mind, I'd be willing to bet you.
Scientifically, it's hardly a gamble.
It's happened before, a great earthquake that destroyed San Francisco in 1906.
It's estimated to have been an 8.3 on the Richter scale, which measures an earthquake size and destructive energy.
The same size earthquake, they say, will inevitably happen again in California.
Is there any reason to doubt the scientists who say that the big quake in California
within the next 20 or 30 years is inevitable?
There's no reason to doubt them at all.
In fact, we have a history in the last century of recurring earthquakes, major earthquakes, great earthquakes.
We've only had one in this century, in 1906,
and there's no reason to believe that the pattern of the last century won't be repeated.
Is it fair to say that we're running out of time?
Well, every year we go without an earthquake, we're getting closer to the next major catastrophic earthquake.
Richard Eisner is in charge of earthquake awareness for the San Francisco Bay Area,
and sitting in the football stadium at the University of California in Berkeley,
he can't get any closer to a possible catastrophe.
Where we're sitting in the football stadium at Berkeley, how far are we from the nearest biggest fault?
About two feet.
We are on the trace of the Hayward Fault, which runs from Albany down through Oakland,
down through the East Bay, probably the most populated part of the Bay Area.
The population along the Hayward Fault, directly across the Bay from San Francisco,
has grown to more than two million people.
The Hayward lacks the reputation of the nearby San Andreas, but not its potential for destruction.
Geologists consider it one of the most dangerous faults in California, if not the world,
where even a 6.5 earthquake would be devastating.
In your view as an architect, an urban planner, have we acted wisely in the face of this threat of a catastrophic earthquake?
That's the question that's embarrassing to answer, because in the last 80 or so years, until very recently,
we essentially ignored the threat of earthquakes in the Bay Area.
We've built on sites that are directly on top of the fault.
We've built in areas where we'd expect extremely violent ground shaking, subsidence, ground failure, liquefaction.
A lot of our lifelines, such as bridges and freeways, are built on areas that we would expect to have ground failure.
In one case, we've built an emergency operations center on the fault trace.
That's the center that's responsible for the emergency broadcast system, for communicating to the public after an event.
It was built to be blast-proof. It was built in the 50s as a part of the civil defense program,
but it will be isolated at best after a major earthquake.
What about hospitals and medical care?
Well, there used to be a joke that if you wanted to find the Hayward Fault, you'd draw a line between the hospitals and the East Bay.
And we do have a number of hospitals that are built very close to the fault.
We expect a number of them to be subject to damage and potentially be victims themselves,
not being able to care for the patients that would be coming in from the surrounding communities.
There are four hospitals, 30 schools, a power station, even a resort hotel on or near the fault line.
But in a great earthquake, medical care becomes a critical issue on either side of the Bay.
Most hospitals in the Bay Area are not expected to survive intact in an earthquake
and will be either partially or totally incapacitated or physically fall down, as we saw happen in Mexico City.
Dr. Michael Callahan is chief of emergency medicine at the University of California Hospital in San Francisco.
He'd be among the first to respond to the needs of thousands injured in an earthquake.
If the earthquake were to hit tomorrow or next year, would you be ready for it? Could you deal with it?
In the sense of being able to provide the usual standard quality of care that the average American citizen expects,
absolutely not, and we never will be.
What do you need that you don't have to deal with the after effects of a catastrophic earthquake in the Bay Area?
Well, just about everything, because basically the whole substructure of modern medicine is going to disappear.
I mean, we count on, first of all, having a physically intact building, of having electricity,
of having natural gas piped in, of having fresh, unlimited water, and having a transportation system that will bring patients to us.
We also count on supplies.
Very few hospitals find it economically possible to store, say, a week's worth of supplies on the premises.
And as a result, we have about one day's worth of supplies in the hospital, and the rest are stored elsewhere,
somewhere on the other side of the city where we probably wouldn't be able to get to them in an earthquake.
So we're probably going to run out of all those things.
And what might the consequences be?
Well, the consequences will be that we just won't, we'll have to improvise.
We won't be practicing the standard of medicine that we ordinarily do.
It's going to be like battlefield medicine.
We'll make do, you know, we'll be back to the old movie cliche of ripping up clothes and, you know,
tying on bandages, pieces of cloth, that sort of thing.
And that some people just aren't going to get treated adequately.
In the days immediately after an eight-point earthquake in the Bay Area,
as many as 44,000 people would require hospital care.
Up to 11,000 could be killed.
Those estimates could be high or low.
Lifelines will be disrupted if not broken.
Bridges are expected to survive, but not their approaches, making them unusable.
There will be widespread damage to freeways, power lines, and communications.
The San Francisco Airport built on landfill next to the Bay will be closed for several weeks.
The runways are expected to break or sink into the weakened ground.
A federal assessment is pessimistic, calling the nation unprepared for a catastrophic earthquake in California,
saying the response to it will quickly become disorganized, ineffective.
We know inevitably we're going to have recurrences of major earthquakes in the Bay Area,
and that people are going to be killed.
And unless we find out beforehand what the problems are and solve the problems, strengthen the buildings,
we're essentially dooming a significant population of the Bay Area to death and injury.
And that's irresponsible.
Why? Why aren't we doing something about it?
I think for two reasons.
One, we avoid the fact of the earthquake threat.
All of us do, individually. Businesses do, government does.
And secondly, that there's a concern just for the magnitude of the problem.
Can we afford to strengthen these buildings?
And I would turn that question around and say, you know, can we afford not to?
And my answer is we can't. We cannot afford to leave these hazardous buildings in place.
It's been said that earthquakes don't kill people, that buildings do.
All of San Francisco is vulnerable, but some parts of the city are even more endangered than others.
One is Chinatown, where many of the Bay Area's thousands of unreinforced brick buildings would collapse in a big earthquake.
Even if they didn't, it's likely their stone parapets would crash to the crowded streets below.
Some buildings are vulnerable not because of how they're built, but where.
The heavily used financial district is also on landfill, and subject to ground failure if the earthquake's big enough.
The same is true for this fashionable residential neighborhood on the Bay's edge, the marina,
where the landfill supporting these joggers includes debris from the Great Quake of 1906.
It could be a reminder or an omen.
If we have a recurrence of a 1906-type earthquake, a great earthquake in the Bay Area, or even a 1868 earthquake on the Hayward Fault,
the recovery from that event would be decades.
Decades.
We're talking about billions of dollars.
We're talking about 44 billions of dollars.
And we're talking about the loss of thousands of lives.
Yes.
And the 44 billion dollar figure is just structural damage.
It's not loss of income, it's not business disruption, it's just physical damage to buildings.
Earthquake experts must contemplate the hidden power of nature and consider the consequences.
It's human nature to take another view, hardly aware that you might be fishing at the very spot
where the San Andreas Fault comes ashore at Muscle Rock, in a suburb just south of San Francisco.
If there's a community that typifies the promise and peril of life along the fault line, it's Daly City.
The promise for some 80,000 people in these suburban streets is an affordable home,
no matter that 30 years ago a frightening earthquake shook this area or that some of these houses have been condemned.
Is it ever on your mind that the San Andreas Fault comes into the coast just very close to here?
It is all the time, yeah.
Of course we've got the cliff there and that's pretty scary.
I thought about that the last time.
It's a pretty good drop and a lot of land could slide right out of here, you know.
But even on this cliff, it's life and business as usual for the real estate agent.
When people come to look at this house, are they aware that the San Andreas Fault comes in from the coast in this area?
Yes, I'd say a large percentage of the people are aware of it.
They do ask, what about the slides?
And you can look out and see there is an erosion problem in some of the cliffs out here.
They're very concerned. Some people want to guarantee that, gee, if I buy this property,
is it going to be here 10, 20 years? Am I going to be able to sell it?
What would persuade you to live right here?
The view.
The view, that's it.
Are you aware of what you're standing on right now?
We weren't when we looked at the other house. We are now.
You know the San Andreas Fault comes in right over here.
If people don't know the San Andreas Fault is right outside this window, do you tell them?
You have to. If they write up an offer, you have to disclose that information to them.
Anything that would change somebody's mind about purchasing that property, you have to disclose to them.
If you don't, you can be in a whole hell of a lot of trouble.
Did you ask the real estate agent about any of this?
No, nothing.
Because from the place over there, if you take a look in there, you'll find out that you cannot see this.
Did she say anything?
No.
Would you?
We just talked to a couple who had just seen this house, and they said they didn't know the San Andreas Fault was right outside here.
Oh, they didn't? Well, we have so many people coming through here, it's impossible to really talk to everyone.
This neighborhood is known officially as a geological hazard study zone, landslide site 26.
But not everyone knows about his neighbor, the San Andreas Fault, a subject that wouldn't come up at a Sunday brunch unless you asked.
Have you ever heard of the San Andreas Fault?
Yeah. I heard about it.
Did you know that you were living right on top of it?
Are we?
Yeah, that's what he said. Yeah, we are. But if we knew that, we wouldn't even buy this house.
How do you feel about that?
Well, we own this property now. If something happens, it's the will of God. That's how I look at it.
You know, you can tell somebody that we're going to lose part of the peninsula, and I don't think anyone's going to pack up and move.
Why not?
People are that way. You know, they hear so much stuff, they just...
Is this part of being a Californian?
That is. It's Shaker City. And people say, well, yes, but you get a view. I like the view.
There's a possibility that an earthquake might not happen, and maybe I'll live here 10 years and sell it to somebody else and get out.
We have recorded 359 earthquakes in northern and central California larger than magnitude 1 during the last 24 hours.
This epicenter was located about 14 miles east of San Jose, California.
At 355 this morning, we recorded a magnitude 5.3 earthquake. This earthquake was located approximately 20 kilometers northeast of San Jose.
From Daly City, 400 miles south to San Bernardino, there's no place to go to escape the central fact of California's geologic life.
The San Andreas and other faults cut through and around the state's most significant centers of population and of industry, like Silicon Valley, 50 miles south of San Francisco.
What happens in Silicon Valley is felt far beyond California.
These companies are on the leading edge of high-tech research and development, and on the brink of disaster in the event of a big enough earthquake.
They're making everything here from microchips to space satellites, accounting for a major share of the country's third-largest industry and its $300 billion in worldwide sales.
But they haven't made buildings to withstand the shockwaves of even a good-sized quake.
That's one of the things that concerns Jim Birkeland, the local county geologist, who's made it his job to think ahead about earthquakes.
But if and when it happens? Oh, don't say if. Never say if. It's going to happen? Absolutely.
No question about it? No question. When it happens? Yes.
How vulnerable is Silicon Valley to a catastrophic earthquake?
We haven't really had a test. The 6.2 we had on April 24th, two years ago, was child's play compared to an 8.2, like one thousandth of the energy involved.
We would have to have a thousand of those 6.2s to equal one 8.2.
I know one of the question marks that structural engineers talk to me about are the tilt-up structures, which are almost a local phenomenon, where they pour the walls on the ground flat, they prop them up and tie them together, and then they slap the roof on.
If all of these are not tied very carefully together with steel, they're going to be subject to a lot of distress, and with the possibility of the walls moving outward and the roofs coming down.
Those buildings could collapse. They could. How typical is that of buildings in Silicon Valley? There are thousands of them.
What's in and around those buildings is the unseen danger for Silicon Valley and everyone within miles of it. The gases, chemicals, and other harmful materials whose release could be damaging for years to come.
Those buildings that contain hazardous materials or hazardous processes would be spilling those materials.
They have a problem now with underground storage tanks that are leaking into the groundwater, and you'd expect to see some of those tanks literally floating out of the ground because of the high groundwater,
or being ruptured and contaminating the drinking water to a number of South Bay communities.
We have so many buried tanks, old gas tanks, natural gas lines, reservoirs for waste from the various Silicon Valley companies, and to me they're like a lot of land mines waiting for a seismic footprint.
In many cases we're not sure what happens when the contents merge. Maybe they're bad enough by themselves, and when they merge, what are we up against?
What Silicon Valley is up against is a landscape that includes at least two major fault lines.
Along with prosperity has come the realization of what a big enough earthquake could do.
Even a 6.2, like the one in 1984, is an earthquake that people near here will not soon forget.
Minutes after that earthquake, this road was just jammed with traffic. We had about 2,000 people trying to get out of there.
We knew something bad had happened over at United Technology, the IT company that calls hazardous waste materials.
There was a steady stream of their trucks going in and out of there, both liquid and solid waste trucks.
We're up in this canyon just above them. We are actually above United Technology. And in the past, whenever they've had explosions or chemical leaks of any kind,
if the conditions are right, the air currents carry everything right up this canyon, just like it was in a chimney.
And the complex itself, where they store their hazardous materials, is right on the Calaveras Fault.
It's right on the fault?
Right on it.
United Technology Corporation makes and tests fuel for space rockets and nuclear missiles and admits the earthquake caused almost $3 million damage.
UTC denies that any lives were endangered, but the possibility is not lost on Ken Santos.
I thought I knew what an earthquake was, but after what we went through, I had no idea really what an earthquake could do.
The groaning that came up from within the bowels of the earth and the shaking.
How long have you lived here?
I've been here for 40 years.
Why do you stay?
We aren't. We're going to move if we can.
In California, there are few places to move to that aren't potential earthquake zones.
And wherever you go in California, people have earthquake stories to tell.
I was over there by the rose bush and she was in here and the ground started going up and down just like on a trampoline.
And she couldn't get over to me and I couldn't get over to her. It was that bad.
It makes you seasick. Everything moves.
The people were working in the park over there and they all yelled earthquake, earthquake.
I was in an apartment with three other GIs that we just got out of the service in.
When we woke up under that earthquake condition, we all thought we were in Vietnam with mortars coming in.
And we actually woke up yelling incoming.
And by the time I really woke up, I was down the stairs outside the building.
I was at home and it shook to where the water actually splashed out of the swimming pool.
I mean large amounts of water.
I said, well, it's going to go down. Come out like this, just like an accordion, the building and the ground.
I had a very hard problem to keep my equilibrium. I'd go like this.
The ground was going just like this.
I felt this big bang and went dashing for the door, figuring there was an explosion.
And then I saw the neighbors five acres just undulating and rolling like a choppy sea with waves maybe a foot high.
There was a lot of noise. It was almost like a freight train coming down the hall.
Things were flying. You could not get across the floor because the floor was rolling.
There was no way out.
You basically had to stay where you were and just wait until it stopped and pray that it stopped.
One time I panicked. This is when I was living in the city at the time.
And, you know, I just panicked. We were up on the third floor of this old building.
I was like, let's get out of here.
But now we just sort of just ride them out, you know, because there's really nothing you can do.
You go outside, inside. You just have to stay with it.
Not every earthquake can be felt, but almost 40,000 a year are recorded in California, and seismic activity is increasing.
So is the attention being given it by government experts like Alan Lind.
A great earthquake on the San Andreas Fault in California is a very real threat
and a threat that the people of California should be aware of and should be preparing for.
Lynn and colleague Bill Bakken are geophysicists who are all too aware of what isn't yet known about earthquakes
and aware also that what we don't know could hurt us.
If you take a look at the fault map of California, it's covered with lines.
And there are many other faults that we don't yet know about.
And earthquakes that occur on these faults surprise us.
And we've been surprised a few times in the past few years and will be surprised again.
There will always be unexpected earthquakes in California because it's a very complicated piece of real estate.
On the morning of May 2, 1983, no one knew there was a major active fault near the central California town of Coalinga.
By 4.45 that afternoon, everyone knew.
It looked like someone had dropped a bomb on Coalinga.
We had a number of brick buildings downtown and those brick buildings were pretty well destroyed.
There were bricks all the way across the street.
There was a fire going.
One of our businesses, a restaurant, caught on fire.
It burned it and the jewelry store next door.
So it was really, it was bad. It looked like a bomb had struck.
Peggy Donaldson is a real estate agent who recalls the day that put Coalinga on the map.
And I believe myself as well as probably most people in Coalinga kind of went into shock.
And I believe we basically stayed in that shock for months, perhaps even a year or two.
I find myself now, if a noise is made, suddenly I jump.
You know, because I'm wondering, is it another quake?
On Peggy Donaldson's block, every house but one was destroyed and the rebuilding isn't finished yet.
One of every three homes in Coalinga was severely damaged, 26 businesses lost.
In all, damage was $31 million and more than 200 people were injured.
The earthquake of 6.7 lasted six seconds.
So it took a little recovery time, but I've actually had clients call or customers call and say,
I'm thinking about moving to Coalinga. I need a little excitement in my life.
Try as they might to put it behind them.
The people of Coalinga also discovered something geophysicists do know.
It doesn't take an eight-point earthquake to be destructive.
There's no season for earthquakes and usually no warning.
That makes the prediction of earthquakes the most uncertain science of all.
Yet California is being wired, measured, and monitored in search of an earthquake about to happen.
The scientists think they found one halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Parkfield, a sparsely populated farm community with a one-room schoolhouse
where one of the teacher's lessons is about Parkfield's remarkable history of earthquakes.
We had an earthquake in 1857, 1881, 1901, 1922.
In 1922 to 1934 it moved its schedule up a bit.
It came in 12 years instead of the usual 22.
Then from 1934 it went up to 1966 and therefore it averaged it out to that neat 20-22 year cycle again.
So the reason for studying Parkfield is you have something here to study.
It sounds to me like that next earthquake is coming pretty soon.
Yeah, it didn't move its 12-year cycle so we're looking at it just logically 88 would fit the pattern.
Duane Hammond is doing more than teaching these days.
Three times a week he goes to work in a pickup truck driving right past the San Andreas Fault.
In this valley are about 170 people, 18 seismographs, 8 creep meters, and a laser gun.
Hammond is looking for any sign an earthquake is on the way.
Any one of 17 reflectors will indicate if the Earth has moved even 1 25th of an inch.
But geophysicists still aren't sure they have the right answers.
The fact that we predicted an earthquake at Parkfield is really sort of an accident.
We don't know how to predict earthquakes yet. That's what we're trying to find out.
That's what most experts say, the conventional wisdom.
It's not what all earthquake watchers are saying, including Jim Birkeland,
a geologist whose unconventional methods he says bring results.
How successful are you at predicting earthquakes?
Well, the latest count, as of the end of February, was 197 out of 237.
And that was an 83 percent average.
I just blew one last week. I called Caltech expecting a Southern California earthquake of moderate 3 to 5.
And it didn't happen. The dogs fooled me that time.
The dogs that fooled him are in the newspaper's Missing Pets column,
which Birkeland believes is an important clue for prediction.
He says animals act strangely before an earthquake and often run away.
One, two, three, four, five, six, found. Eighteen below average.
The theory may be unorthodox, but it's not unheard of.
We've got 12 lost. That's counting two puppies as one because puppies go off together.
And if it's a mother dog and a puppy, I count that as one.
But we have 12 lost and six found for a total of 18. That's one of the lower numbers.
Wait, how many dogs and cats have to be missing before you suspect something?
Well, I do have a threshold level.
For cats, that level is six because the normal is three or four.
And for dogs, it's 40. Now, before our 6.2, we had 41 missing dogs.
Before our 5.3 here, we had over 50 missing dogs this year.
I mean, the incidence of unusual animal behavior around the time of an earthquake can't be just coincidental.
Not in my book. I used to think so.
But I've had so many personal experiences and so many responses from pet owners and veterinarians and pet hospitals that it can't be accidental.
There are days when all these delightful cats come in and every one of them is mad or tries to scratch or bite or hiss.
And whenever I see a day like that, when practically all of them, that means to me there's something going on in the environment that's affecting more than just one cat.
When it's affecting several cats, then there's something big out there.
Jim Stiles is a veterinarian who says when it comes to earthquakes, cats at least should be taken seriously, based not only on their behavior, but on signs of a specific illness.
There's a urological syndrome called feline urological syndrome where crystals are produced in the bladder.
It's triggered by stress. Nobody is really sure what causes it.
And every time we see a rash of them, four or five, six, in a very short period of time, an earthquake is imminent.
When you see something like this, you have to say something's going on.
Birkeland also claims that studies of the sun, the moon, and the tides point to periods during which the world is most likely to experience earthquakes. He calls them seismic windows.
Jim, what do you see for this seismic window that's coming up this week?
Okay, between the 23rd and the 30th of April, I'm 75 percent confident that we're going to have a 3.5 to 5.5 magnitude quake within 70 miles of San Jose.
A 3.5 is the smallest earthquake that Birkeland predicts, and this one he believed would strike close to home.
It did.
A magnitude 3.5 earthquake occurred yesterday morning. This earthquake was located approximately 24 kilometers northeast of San Jose.
Also, somewhere in the world, I fully expect, at the same confidence level, 75 percent, that we're going to have a 7.0 or better, a major quake.
A major earthquake occurred near the southern coast of Mexico. The magnitude was computed at 7.0 on the Richter scale.
Birkeland was right again, but his predictions and his methods have not satisfied his critics.
Well, people at the Geological Survey have tried to evaluate those claims and come up with quite different numbers.
And we really, I don't think, had a particular reason to disagree with him. I think we're open-minded in trying to find ways to do this.
But I think the consensus was, for the people that looked carefully at that, that he did a little bit, he didn't quite do as well as he would have done if he flipped a coin.
And they would say, oh, he's merely matching two random series of events. It's a little bit other than reading tea leaves.
Birkeland's not a scientist. He's an enthusiast. We don't discuss Birkeland and his theory. We have our own theory about Birkeland.
It would be very useful if Jim would come forward and publish the data on alignment of planets or dogs and cats or anything else, just in the ordinary way he publishes papers on geologic mapping.
Jim's a geologist. He knows all about publishing in journals. He knows what the rules of the game are.
And to my knowledge, he still chooses to ignore the rules of the game and conduct his research in the public press.
Along with his predictions, what Jim Birkeland has published is a poem, an ode to official skeptics.
The moon was over Katmandu. The cats were fleeing, two by two. The fleas were also right behind, along with beasts of every kind.
A catalog of what I'd seen I brought before the king and queen. The jester made the droll remark that frightened ducks say quack, quack, quark.
Then laughter shook the noble hall, where plans continued for a ball. The regents moved to spurn my plea. The town moved then to 8.3.
It's the view of many geologists that moving to an 8.3 means taking the road to Southern California in the direction of San Bernardino.
To the relief of this county's one million people and to the millions more in Los Angeles just 40 miles west of here,
the southern San Andreas hasn't moved dramatically in 130 years. But a catastrophic earthquake occurs here about every 145 years.
That's the reason this is considered the most likely place for the next great earthquake.
We are simulating the San Andreas Fault. When there is pressure exerted on these two fault lines, we have an earthquake.
Pressure. Pressure. Pressure. Slip.
With the San Andreas Fault no more than a few hundred yards away, a school playground becomes a training ground for learning to live with earthquakes.
Have you ever played around there up on that fault? Yeah, we ride our skateboards in the fault line.
Is that a good place to ride a skateboard? Yes. It's great.
What makes it good? It's just rounded off in the bottom. It's just something after school.
Have you ever felt earthquakes around here? Yeah. What do they feel like?
It's like a boulder moving under your feet. Yeah. It's just like the room swing and stuff.
Like you're on a big gigantic swing. Yeah. It's just... It's kind of...
Their pitchers fall down off the wall.
Sixth graders are being taught when an earthquake might do and what to do when it happens.
Two injured. Who are they? Neil, Edmund, and Laura Huntsley.
Laura really doesn't have a sore foot, so I don't want her to knock the door down.
Okay. Okay. We'll work something out. What we want to do is get each one of the children out and your supplies out.
So if you'll have your aide come out first, hand her the supplies, and then designate the children to come out if you'll come out after we evacuate the injured.
Along with geography and arithmetic, in Southern California the earthquake response drill is now part of the curriculum.
Why are you doing all of this today? So then we can be prepared for a real earthquake. Yeah.
And so then we would know what to do before, during, and after an earthquake.
Are you prepared? Yes. Yes.
Do you ever worry about an earthquake? No. If we go through this, we won't be worried.
Psychological preparation is also important for adjusting to an earthquake's shock and aftershocks.
It's kind of scary because you don't get to see everybody when an earthquake is going on.
Like, it shakes and you can't go outside and make sure everybody's okay.
How you doing, okay? Good. Everything's going to be fine. You just relax, okay?
Everything's going to be fine. Let's get another one to cover it. Elevator, speak with me.
Good for you. Here we go. Good boy. Everything will be fine. Here we go.
Okay, Amy, you're here. There. Okay? Good boy.
So it's a terrible tragedy. It's a tragedy that is second in tragedies that have occurred in this country.
The first is the Civil War and then by far this will be the second worst that's ever occurred.
Terry Jagerson of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department is in charge of emergency services.
His emergency planning is dominated by the one central fact he can neither escape nor forget, even at 12,000 feet.
In LA, all these mountains are a large part of the San Andreas Fault geology.
And see right out in here, that is the San Andreas Fault. There's a little ridge line right there about a half a mile from us now.
The city of San Bernardino sits atop two major faults, the San Andreas and the San Jacinto.
And the city's major freeway interchange, used by 200,000 cars a day, straddles the San Jacinto.
I think that there's a possibility that these may go down during an earthquake because we have maybe 20 primary pillars upon which those things stand
and any one of which falls, it looks like it would eliminate transportation.
We wouldn't be able to have traffic go in or out on these thoroughfares.
A less obvious danger looms in the surrounding terrain and has caused Jagerson to say living here is like sitting on a hydrogen bomb.
One of the things that's going to happen is that the petroleum in the natural gas lines, which are under high pressure, are going to burst,
creating a large cloud of gas. And we're told that that will be so dense that it can't explode. There's no oxygen in it. But as that diffuses, it will become very volatile and could explode.
From this perspective in the foothills, it might not appear as life-threatening, but this is one of the fastest growing counties in America, a region already in the midst of a population explosion.
You can see right up there next to the San Andreas fault, right next to it, there's a new tract of homes going in.
But look at all these out. I mean, there's tracts going in all over here. There's a new tract, there's a new tract. There's one right in front of us, there's two over there, there's three over there.
It's just an amazing growth time that we're having. This area is growing in spite of the threat.
They're indicating $60 billion in structural damage, 15,000 dead, 55,000 injured.
And to try to take that into concept, if we took those that needed hospital and put them into the emergency beds and put all of them into emergency hospital beds, it would fill every hospital bed in the free world.
How do you truly prepare for enough injured to fill every emergency hospital bed in the free world? That's hard to do.
How do you prepare for the blood that's going to be necessary and the infrastructure needs, like water and power and sanitary conditions that are going to have to be done, the burying of the dead is going to be a problem.
So we're being better and better prepared, but I don't think we'll ever be totally prepared to respond to that. It's going to be like, how do you prepare for a nuclear war?
I don't know if you can prepare for one having and you might prepare for preventing one.
But you can't prevent an earthquake.
And you can't prevent an earthquake. Again, it's coming and it's every minute brings us one minute closer to that fact.
The University of California seismographic stations at Berkeley recorded a strong earthquake.
We have recorded 138 earthquakes larger than magnitude 1 during the last 24 hours.
The University of California seismographic stations at Berkeley recorded a large earthquake.
This earthquake is an aftershock of the magnitude 6.4 earthquake.
It's speculation, if not fact, that an eight-point earthquake near here would cause strong ground shaking over an area 250 miles long and 100 miles wide, including all of metropolitan Los Angeles and beyond.
With consequences disastrous not only for California, but the nation, even the world.
Los Angeles has become a world financial center.
It's skyline dominated by banks, which depend on sophisticated computer systems vulnerable to earthquakes.
In this bank alone, two and a half million checks a day are processed, worth some 17 billion dollars.
If the computers of LA's banks are down for three days, it would affect the economy of California and more.
We pay for our cars, we pay our mortgages, we pay our large debts to corporations that are not necessarily located here.
All of those checks would be affected. All of those receipts would be affected.
Likewise, the businesses in California that sell things to people outside the state would have no way of depositing and processing the incoming flow of checks.
So right away we have a short-term interruption in the normal flow across the United States of check items.
If the bank's computers are down five days, the nation's economy would be affected.
That's the estimate of the California Bankers Association in a report David Harris helped to write.
The further we get behind, the further the ripple effect financially until we do reach the international clearings.
That is the wire transfers of major banks around the world who are involved with supporting the import-export business.
All those cars coming in from Japan, all those TV sets, those have to be paid for with international letters of credit.
If the bank in Los Angeles is unable to issue letters of credit and follow up with good funds to the suppliers overseas,
then the suppliers overseas are going to be impeded in their ability to ship goods.
If the bank's computers are down seven days, it would affect the economy of the world, a possibility that can't be dismissed.
The question is, how soon can we resume a more normal existence, both of individuals and small businesses and large businesses?
That's the key to the whole question, is the speed with which we can return to normalcy.
Is there an answer to that question?
Weeks. Weeks, perhaps months.
The crippling effects of a great earthquake would also be felt by the nation's defense industry.
At Air Force Plant 42 in nearby Palmdale, almost every Air Force plane since the 1960s has been built or tested less than a mile from the San Andreas Fault.
Today, they're working on the secret stealth bomber in the supersonic B-1.
Throughout Southern California, there are hundreds of defense contractors doing $42 billion a year in business vital to the nation's security.
Most are located on or near a major fault line, a threat studied by Air Force Colonel Norman Neal.
You've surveyed some of our biggest defense contractors, Rockwell, Lockheed. Are they ready for a big earthquake?
I don't think that many of our major defense contractors are ready for a catastrophic earthquake, just as most other businesses are not.
Are we moving fast enough to prepare for that major earthquake the scientists say is coming?
Well, that's a very key question, and I think the answer is no.
Neal's report calls it a distressing situation that would have a significant impact on the nation's military readiness.
California companies account for half the government's missile and space business.
In many cases, they are the only source for some of the country's most critical defense systems, and in the aftermath of a great earthquake, production delays could run from 2 to 28 months.
When asked, several major contractors declined interviews about their vulnerability and preparations, a crucial issue, especially if the earthquake occurs in the near future.
I think if we had a major catastrophic earthquake in the near term, within the next year or two, as our study showed, we'd have major damage to many of our contractor facilities and we'd have major program delays.
And it could be several months after a major earthquake before some of those manufacturers were back online.
Could be.
At this point, would it be fair to say that a major earthquake would have a serious impact on the nation's defense contractors?
It would have a serious impact on our defense contractor base, yes.
And therefore on the nation's defenses?
Obviously.
In the wake of a catastrophic earthquake.
What kinds of questions are going to be asked if we're not ready, if we're not prepared?
In the aftermath, by the congressional hearings that are going to come down and ask us, why didn't you do more?
I think that's a question. Why didn't you do more? Why were we not better prepared? Why wasn't more money put into this kind of deal? Why wasn't there a greater sense of urgency to do more?
What have we not done to prepare the average citizen for this?
For the average citizen, Palmdale, as much as any other place, symbolizes the unknown dangers that move beneath the surface of California's good life.
It's a boomtown of the 1980s, known as a model of growth of the future.
It's also known for the Palmdale Bulge, the place where the San Andreas Fault mysteriously rose about a foot in the 1960s.
If that was a warning sign, it's been ignored.
But ready or not, the great earthquake's coming.
It could happen in 30 years, or tomorrow, if not in our lifetimes, in our children's.
How it will affect all of our lives can only be guessed, but undeniably, it will.
There have been at least five magnitude 3.0 or larger earthquakes since the magnitude 5.3 that occurred this morning, and the level of aftershock activity has increased significantly.
Since Sunday morning, we have located more than 2,100 earthquakes larger than magnitude 1 in this region that are foreshocks and aftershocks of the magnitude 6.0 earthquake that occurred on Monday.
A final note about our fear of earthquakes.
It has been 80 years since the great San Francisco quake.
However, now experts have discovered that the official death toll given by the city, 478 killed, was in fact five times higher.
More than 2,000 people perished.
Why the cover-up?
One theory is that officials conspired to downplay the death toll for fear that eastern businessmen would be afraid ever again to invest in a city so vulnerable to earthquakes.
Please join us again for Frontline.
I'm Judy Woodruff.
Good night.
Next on Frontline, it's become a national crusade.
Drugs.
Do we have the resolve, as a nation and as individuals, to do something about them?
I always thought for a long time, treatment, well, you know, I'm going to go through treatment, I'm going to be cured, but there is no such thing.
Watch Stopping Drugs, a special two-part presentation next on Frontline.
For a transcript of this program, please send $4 to Frontline, Box 322, Boston, Massachusetts, 02134.
Frontline is produced for the Documentary Consortium by WGBH Boston, which is solely responsible for its content.
Funding for Frontline was provided by this station and other public television stations nationwide and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Schools, colleges, and other organizations interested in purchasing or renting video cassettes of this program may call 800-424-7963 or write PBS Video.
Post Office Box 8092, Washington, D.C., 20024.