But the ultimate horror had been reserved for a man who lived above the level of the reservoir on the western side, and whose house overlooked the earthen structure holding back the water. Reservoir keeper Clyde Carney had been thrown off his bed onto the floor by the first heavy jolts of the quake. Waking up in an instant, aware that his house was still vibrating violently, the image of the dam a few hundred yards away filled his mind’s eye as he got to his feet and ran to the front door.
What he saw nearly stopped his heart. The concrete roadway atop the dam had split in two and slumped into the reservoir, and the dirt face of the dam—the dam itself—was beginning to crumble. As he watched, helpless, his mind reeling at the specter, layer after layer of the water-side portion of his dam shook loose and slid backward into the water, the saturated soil seeming to be part liquid as it slumped and slid. There were only a few feet left between the water level and the top now. The far side of the dam, the part to the east, was going fast. There was no concrete left on top, and the level of the remaining dirt seemed mere inches away from disaster. And there was nothing in the world he could do but watch with his heart in his throat.
Carney knew without forming the words what would happen if a single shaft of water shot over that disintegrating mound of dirt. It would carve a vertical slice into what remained, the rush of water (propelled by the force of 27 million tons of liquid weight) pushing ever faster and in greater volumes through the channel, taking more and more of the dam with each second, growing within a minute or less to a torrent, and then to a massive, horrifying cascade as the dam gave way completely, 6.7 billion gallons of water forming a wall of instant death for the tens of thousands of sleepy people in homes which stretched as far as he could see to the south.
But the shaking had stopped. Carney saw a last slice of dirt slough into the water, then nothing. Nothing else was sliding. There couldn’t be more than two or three feet of remaining dam surface above the waterline, but thank God, at least there was some. Would it hold? Was there time? Carney knew he had to move fast. Pumps would have to be started immediately to begin drawing down the lake, pumping the water into the Los Angeles River and to the sea. There might be pluggable breaches in the face of the dam. Those would have to be filled, fast. With every pump and every man they had working nonstop, the process would take hours—days—to be really safe. In the meantime, the dam could go at any second.
As Carney turned and headed back into his house to summon crews to the scene and tell the police they’d better evacuate the area, the realization that the lake had not been full weighed heavily on his mind. It had been at only about 60 percent of capacity as the result of routine drawdown. Now the top of the dam was far below where the waterline normally stood. If the lake had been filled …
In only ten seconds it was over. There would be thirteen mild aftershock sequences in the following six minutes, but the main quake was over. The San Andreas had not slipped. The great quake that Charles Richter and so many other earth scientists feared had not yet occurred.5
But the seismic waves that had been generated by the essentially moderate “event” (which would be rated at ML 6.6 on Professor Richter’s scale) had killed forty-one people at the VA hospital, two at the Olive View facility, two on the freeway, and seventeen others across the city—including several people killed in their beds by falling beams and ceilings and nine who died of heart attacks before they could get medical help. In all, 944 buildings suffered major damage or were destroyed, and 139 others would be unsafe for occupancy without repairs. In addition, eighty thousand people had to be evacuated for nearly three days from the area below the Van Norman Dam until the water could be drawn down far enough for safety, and the lifelines—electrical power, sewers, water, telephone and other communications, as well as the normal chain of food supplies—were seriously disrupted for the same length of time.
All in ten seconds. All from a ML 6.6 earthquake, which had even managed to destroy a supposedly earthquake-proof public building.6
Los Angeles hadn’t had as bad a scare since March 10, 1933, when a major tremor flattened Long Beach (on the southern edge of Los Angeles), killing 120 people and destroying scores of school buildings which were empty of schoolchildren only because it was late afternoon (5:54 P.M.).
In other words, the Los Angeles area had been extraordinarily lucky in 1933. And in the confusion and the destruction of February 9, 1971, with sirens filling the air all over the San Fernando Valley, it was chillingly obvious to those who remembered the history of the 1933 disaster that Angelenos had been saved by luck and timing once again. Had the quake hit during rush hour when the freeways and many of the heavily damaged commercial and office buildings were occupied, had it struck when the Van Norman Reservoir was full, had it lasted another five or ten or twenty seconds (as it would in a major or great quake), the carnage could have been in the thousands, or worse.
Disasters, of course, breed changes and safety precautions that no amount of worried rhetoric could otherwise force. Thirty-eight years before the San Fernando quake the citizens of the Long Beach area had gathered in shock before crushed and broken school buildings in their city, holding their unscathed children tightly, and realized the magnitude of what would have occurred had school been in session. Within days experts were estimating that thousands of students would have been crushed to death beneath collapsing unreinforced masonry walls and ceilings, pancaking concrete floors, and poorly braced doorframes. Perhaps tens of thousands more would have been injured, and some of those maimed for life.
The jolting realization that the schools themselves had threatened their children’s lives grew into a tide of public and parental outrage which rapidly spilled over into the political arena and carried new legislation through the California statehouse in record time on a flood of concern—a landmark bill which required public schools in California to be built to survive earthquake damage. The new law was a significant step, one of the first, in fact, in what would become known as the process of hazard mitigation. Suddenly all California public schools, regardless of which school district owned the facility, were charged with doing something about the risk of building collapse in a major quake. The Field Act, as it was known, was the beginning—but it was only a beginning.7
Recriminations and angry statements of who was to blame for what element of damage and lack of preparedness began within hours of the San Fernando quake as well. Questions of why the Olive View and veterans hospitals had been destroyed, why a dangerous dam had been allowed to continue holding water, and why the existing building codes had not been enough to protect the citizenry of San Fernando and Los Angeles echoed back and forth for months.8
But memories are very short when it comes to expediency. Considerations of how much it costs to tear down dangerous buildings, how much it costs to build to higher standards, and how much it costs not to build on unstable ground once again become paramount after the rubble has been removed and the dead have been buried. Just as Charleston, South Carolina, had rebuilt many of its badly damaged buildings of unreinforced masonry on the very same ground after the 1886 earthquake—just as San Francisco had permitted the reconstruction of questionable structures on shaky ground throughout the city following the 1906 catastrophe—so, too, would Los Angeles try to brush aside the message inherent in the San Fernando earthquake as it had in the years following the Long Beach quake. Dangerous construction techniques and designs not prohibited by codes or other new laws would continue. Dangerous unreinforced masonry buildings sure to crumble when the San Andreas slipped again were left standing—and occupied. Land with commercial value would be used regardless of seismic risk or hazardous location. And police, fire, and rescue agencies would continue to talk on different radio frequencies in more than 140 different area jurisdictions like an electronic Tower of Babel sure to contribute to confusion when the inevitable finally happened.
Of course, there was severe disagreement over just what should be done in the face of suc
h a threat. There was very little knowledge or understanding among political leaders and municipal officials about how to respond to such worries. Disaster response—how to pick up the pieces efficiently and quickly, guard damaged areas, care for the injured and restore vital lifeline services—was what city officials always seemed to think of when earthquakes were mentioned. The massive strengthening of building codes and seismic zoning, the forced destruction or rebuilding of hazardous buildings, and education programs to warn people of the many quick and inexpensive things they could do to protect themselves were ideas yet to be born. Certainly the 1970 Steinbrugge report had touched on many such subjects, but few officials had a real, visceral grasp of what was required.
Then, too, the San Fernando quake produced some genuine seismic surprises which seemed to indicate that even the best of existing seismic building codes might be inadequate. One of Charles Richter’s protégés (and a senior Caltech seismologist in his own right), Dr. Clarence Allen, was appointed to head a quickly convened National Research Council panel just after the quake. Within days the members became sufficiently concerned about the possible inadequacy of the building codes to rush their report into print while the memories—and the public support for change—were still fresh.9
The accelerations recorded at the Pacoima Dam (more than one gravity) and the severe ground motion at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains (where the collapsed hospitals had been located) were startlingly violent for a moderate earthquake. In an April article (printed in Science magazine10) one of the panel members was quoted as saying, “I don’t want to overstate this, but if we can’t tie [the severe building damage near the foot of the mountains] to some [unrelated, nonseismic] geologic hazard, then problems of land-use planning and seismic zoning are going to become pretty damn rough.”
“Such uncertainties,” the magazine continued, “underscore a long-standing belief held by many seismologists and structural engineers that a concerted federal program is urgently needed to expand basic and applied seismic research and to assist … ‘high-risk’ cities … to reduce existing earthquake hazards.” But that had been recommended before, the scientific community responded. What about the Press report in 1965 that called for a federal program after the Alaska quake—and got nowhere? What about the 1968 interagency committee report which also called for a ten-year program—and was ignored? What about the engineering report of 1969? And, of course, what of the latest and best—the comprehensive earthquake hazard mitigation recommendations from the Office of Science and Technology team welded together by Karl Steinbrugge?
“The upshot of all these reports,” Science quoted an unnamed “prominent seismologist” as saying, “is that we’ve had enough reports.” What we need, he continued, is action. Perhaps, the scientist told the magazine, the San Fernando quake had “shaken the dust off these many proposals” and would spur action at the federal level. After all, the damage in the Los Angeles area had by then been tabulated, and the bill, which exceeded that of Alaska in 1964, was more than a billion dollars.
“You know, we’ve been lucky before, and we were even more lucky this time.”
The seismologist stood on the eastern flank of the now-empty Van Norman Reservoir complex and looked toward the destroyed dam that had slumped to within three feet of killing tens of thousands of people. Disasters waiting to happen such as this, he had said, must be found—and defused.
“The problem—always the damn problem—is that unless we can tell [city officials and government leaders] when the big one is coming, they think they have forever to handle the problem. And, of course, forever means sometime after they’re no longer in office. Somehow we have to get them the answers they need.”
The scientist pointed to the north, toward the ridge line of the San Gabriels and toward Fort Tejon.
“As Clarence Allen has said, some day, the San Andreas … will break in a major quake. In the meantime, we’re going to have to figure out how that thing works, and approximately how much time is left before whatever is locking up in this area breaks.” He paused, shaking his head.
“Because when that finally happens, luck won’t be enough.”
Chapter 14
Stanford University, Palo Alto, California—March 1974
The waiting was intolerable. His entire future—at least his future as a geologist—hinged on the message that would come through the door with Dean Richard Jahns in a few minutes.
Twenty-three-year-old Kerry Sieh fiddled with a pencil and sighed. He knew he was a bit of a rebel in the Stanford graduate program. There were two ways to travel to a Ph.D. in geology, and the path most often taken—the one the faculty had wanted him to follow—was to become an apprentice to one of the resident masters, letting that professor assign him a Ph.D. thesis project to work on and to specialize in afterward.
And there were two professors under whom he could have apprenticed: one a stratigrapher with strong ties to the oil industry; the other an expert in the mechanics of folded rock layers and how the earth’s crust develops such features. But neither subject had captured Sieh’s imagination. He had his own ideas, and he did not want to adopt somebody else’s program of research.
Sieh had known from the first that going it alone was the tougher method. And he knew it seldom worked. He would have to find a professor who would be his adviser on an independent project that Sieh himself would shape and control. That would take research money, and established professors already had enough trouble getting grants and contracts for their own projects. It was a long shot to think that he could get a piece of that same pie for his own use. Then, too, he would have to overcome the natural bias of the faculty. The professors already had more technical problems to work on than they had graduate students to assign. It was going to be an uphill battle to find one who would support a maverick student with yet another subject of research.
Nevertheless, when he had written his three-page Ph.D. thesis proposal (part of the all-important second-year exam), he had outlined just that: an independent probe aimed at understanding how often the San Andreas Fault generated great earthquakes.
And, in a few minutes, Professor Jahns (dean of the School of Earth Sciences, one of the most respected geologists in academic captivity), would walk through the door and pronounce sentence.
Sieh found himself listening for footsteps in the linoleum hallway outside the office, stiffening every time the sound of shoes on the stairway echoed through the door, relaxing only slightly when they passed and died down. It was probably too late now to second-guess, but had he done the right thing? Would he find any allies on the three-man review panel?
And, basically, had he passed or failed? The seconds ticked by like some diabolical form of ancient academic torture, butterflies performing aerobatic maneuvers in the pit of his stomach.
Kerry Sieh had never been interested in rocks. He was fascinated by a wide variety of subjects, such as political science, economics, music, and many others—but earth sciences had not been originally on his list of favorites. In fact, the Southern California high school senior who had entered the University of California at Riverside in the fall of 1968 had been very confused about what to pursue as a profession. There were some anxious times that first collegiate semester within his dorm room at UC, Riverside, as the eighteen-year-old stared at the math and chemistry tomes in front of him, feeling lost, unnecessary, and adrift.
He had never had a very good image of himself. Since his family had moved to Newport Beach, California, from Iowa in 1962, he had just more or less drifted as a loner—a teenager who liked being outdoors and at the beach, but by himself. Nevertheless, he had enrolled at UC, Riverside with the vague idea that he would focus on economics, or music, or perhaps political science, or maybe even prelaw. None of those particularly excited him, but they provided some potential answers to the ubiquitous campus question: And what’s your major?
As the fall semester approached an end, Kerry became more and more apprehensive about wha
t his future as a college graduate would hold: a life in an office, which he had always assumed to be the inevitable consequence of higher education.
But as January 1969 approached (and campus riots, hippies, activism, and social consciousness competed with folk music for the attention of college students), it dawned on him that there were students approaching their degree who didn’t fit the stereotypical image of corporate clones. One senior in particular had caught his attention whenever he returned from field trips. The senior would be physically and mentally exhausted, yet exhilarated from the experience, the intellectual challenge, and the balance of working both indoors and out. What the fellow was doing, in fact, was studying geology.
Maybe, thought Sieh, there might be a future for me in that area. And with that idea in mind, Kerry Sieh signed up for an introductory class in the spring semester and immediately fell in love with the earth, and the immensity of geologic time and geologic processes.
It was the challenge of finding answers to intriguing questions that came through loud and clear even amidst the rote rhetoric of first-year basics. And there was a visceral excitement to the methodology of charting one’s own course with a backpack and a geologic map (held in the teeth of a battered clipboard), and of striking out for paths untrod and cliffs unclimbed to get the answers to what the surrounding landscape was made of and how it happened to arrive at that particular condition.
Suddenly there was a purpose and a direction to his life that began to grow with each passing course. It was a field in which he had a definite talent, and for which he had rapidly developed an affinity. It was amazing how many other scientific and professional disciplines were involved—how many other areas might be needed to solve a geological problem. Chemistry, physics, engineering, seismology, and many others touched geology, and vice versa. He liked problems that were messy, that required being outside and getting his fingernails dirty—literally. There was something deeply satisfying and therapeutic about geology, and thoughts of a career began to coalesce.
On Shaky Ground Page 20