On Shaky Ground

by Nance, John J. ;

  But there was something missing. By the time the San Fernando quake rumbled through his apartment in Riverside on February 9, 1971 (jolting him awake and sending him wobbling sleepily for the protection of the doorframe), he was becoming concerned that whatever he could do in geology might not be socially relevant. Just searching for oil or working out esoteric research problems would not be enough. The social activism of the late sixties had not been lost on Kerry, who by 1970 had become overtly religious and convinced that everyone had a responsibility to contribute in some way to the betterment of his fellow man. But precisely how a geologist could contribute was unclear to him. It wasn’t a constant worry, just an unfilled hole in the emerging jigsaw puzzle of his professional future.

  Until the following month, that is, when the Geological Society of America held its annual convention on the Riverside campus.

  The San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles were still picking up the pieces following the earthquake as the first of March rolled around, but Kerry Sieh still had not traveled the sixty miles to the west to view the damage. A fellow geology student had tried to get him to go, but earthquakes seemed a seismological problem of the present, while geology was a science of studying and interpreting the past. It hadn’t occurred to him that the two disciplines fit together. Nor had it occurred to him that an upcoming professional meeting of geologists and geophysicists on the university campus might plant in his head the seed of an idea that would help change his future radically.

  It was purely by chance that Kerry Sieh was in the audience when two engineering geologists began presenting a new method they had developed to determine exactly where active faults were located so that their clients’ buildings could be constructed a safe distance away. Traditionally the process of locating precisely where faults were often depended on broad guesswork and interpretation of surface scars that had long since been disturbed or erased by other building activity. Their solution was first to dig a hundred-foot-long, three-foot-wide, ten-foot-deep trench at right angles across the general area of a suspected fault zone. Then, by examining the sedimentary layers exposed in the walls of the trench, they could find the exact trace of the fault itself by locating places where the layers had been broken or vertically torn by past slippage of the fault during earthquakes. That, quite simply, eliminated the guesswork.

  A light of sorts went on in Kerry Sieh’s head. All semester he had been struggling through a class on stratigraphy and sedimentation, learning the nature of sediments, and how they’re laid down. Geologists who master such techniques can examine a cross section of strata and discover a wide range of facts about the history of the place where the sediments were deposited, what the environment was like, when floods occurred, and perhaps even the date and severity of any event which disturbed the layers. In addition, Kerry’s junior year as a geology student had thrust him into the heart of structural geology, the understanding of faults, and how the upper crust of the earth ends up arranged the way it is.

  Sediments and layers, in other words, were arrayed in living color before his mind’s eye as the two engineers talked, and the thought that kept imposing itself seemed terribly simple: They aren’t getting all the information out of those trenches that they could They’re only looking for the location of the faults.

  I’ll bet, Kerry thought, you could stand in one of those trenches, examine the sediments in great detail, and find small scarps that collapsed from small earthquakes, triangular wedges, and perhaps sandblows which could provide a lot of clues as to the nature of those earthquakes.1 And, he realized, if enough plant material could be found in such a place to permit carbon dating, a geologist might be able to discover when the various quakes that had left such telltale evidence had occurred.

  But the two engineers weren’t addressing such questions. They wanted to know only where faults had slipped, not when and how.

  Kerry Sieh left the meeting with those ideas beginning a process of fermentation in the back of his mind. It would be a long trail from March 1971 and the meeting room at UC, Riverside to an office at Stanford with two years of graduate work almost complete and an idea firmly in mind of how to proceed in researching faults, but at least he had a direction, and a reasonable hope.

  Kerry Sieh looked at his watch again. What was keeping the dean? It had been just a few minutes since he last glanced at the hands of his watch, but those minutes were dragging by at a glacial pace. Various thoughts occupied his distracted mind, thoughts and worries such as what on earth he would do if he didn’t pass the exam. In addition to the doctoral thesis proposal, there had been the classroom examination, and although he was pretty sure he had done well, he wouldn’t truly believe it until he heard it from Dr. Jahns in person—whenever that was going to be.

  Jahns had been quite helpful to Sieh, but then that was his way. He was extraordinarily approachable and personable for such a senior scientist, and he genuinely cared about his students—which was one reason he was so well regarded by them. That, and his rather famous sense of humor. His friend at the USGS, Bob Wallace, claimed that half the risqué jokes floating around the country had been crafted and circulated by Jahns, whom Wallace labeled a “world-class raconteur.”

  His practical jokes had become legend as well. Of course, Caltech tended to instill such propensity for energetic nonsense in its students, and Jahns had taken to the practice with an extraordinary dedication.2 There always seemed to be some joke in progress perpetrated either by, or on, Professor Jahns—so much so that at one point as a Caltech professor (before making the jump to Stanford), the school’s administration felt they had to reprimand him for “unprofessorial conduct.”3

  But first and foremost, Dick Jahns was a highly respected geologist who had a visceral love of getting into the field and getting his hands dirty trying to solve messy problems that refused to yield to easy solutions. In that, he was as much a role model for young geologists as he was a professor. He was that rare sort of academician who can look far beyond the normal strictures of academic qualifications and recognize genuine talent and occasional genius, the sort who could see something more than the average in the young doctoral candidate named Kerry Sieh who had ended up on his Stanford doorstep almost by chance.

  A pamphlet had started it—a small flyer sent in 1971 by the National Science Foundation to undergraduate-level geology professors telling about the Student Originated Studies Program. It was a three-million-dollar plan designed to entice science students into socially useful research by inviting research proposals directly from undergraduate students. A certain number of the proposals would be selected and funded with a small NSF grant.

  The pamphlet landed in the hands of one of Kerry Sieh’s geology professors at UC, Riverside, who handed it to another student, who discussed it with still another student, who collared Sieh one afternoon in his senior year.

  “You’re the only one with a sufficiently high grade point average to qualify as director of something like this, Kerry. How about joining us?”

  He had hesitated at first, worried that the time spent applying could lower his grade point average. But however remote it was, the opportunity to try out the idea that had been stewing in his head since the lecture six months before was worth a chance—so he accepted, and began preparing a proposal.

  They would study the nearby San Jacinto Fault, sixty-nine miles from the campus, by using the same trenching technique discussed by the two engineering geologists, but with a different goal: to find a recurrence interval for the earthquakes that occurred there.

  If they succeeded, they would be the first to find earthquake history in the geologic record—in the ground itself—rather than just in human memory.

  But Kerry Sieh did not realize how audacious his plan really was. The possibility that they might fail to find such evidence never crossed his mind. The fact that he might be opening the door to a major new method with planetary implications for advancing seismology was never considered. The pure logic of the propos
al and his ideas for finding a new way of answering some very old questions seemed quite straightforward. The only real problem was whether they had a chance for the grant.

  The application was, in essence, a long shot. Even with the polished proposal, which took two full weeks to put together, there were no assurances it would have a chance. There was a lot of competition nationwide. The odds were probably too great. It probably wouldn’t work.

  But it did. Some five months later the group was shocked to receive word from the NSF that their proposal had been accepted. Sieh and friends, it seemed, would get their grant.

  Of course, there were strings attached, including a requirement that the project director must agree to go on to graduate school. Kerry had made up his mind to become a high school physical sciences teacher or a consulting geologist. He didn’t need a doctorate for either position, but if graduate school was the price of the grant, he’d change plans. By the time his team arrived at the San Jacinto Fault in the summer of 1972, Kerry Sieh had been admitted to Stanford’s School of Earth Sciences as a graduate student.

  The NSF research project was at once a success and a failure. The team failed to establish how often earthquakes originated on the fault, but they gained a wealth of experience working with the evidence—experimenting with the methods appropriate to carry out such a project. For Kerry Sieh, it was an exciting, enticing dress rehearsal. And when classes began at Stanford in the fall, Sieh’s ideas about finding earthquakes in the geologic record had matured significantly.

  The hallway was still empty. Another half hour had passed. Sieh chuckled to himself, thinking of the NSF grant two years before. If he got his doctorate and contributed anything, that would be government money very well spent! It was the government, after all, that had seduced him into geology to begin with.

  Dick Jahns was filling the doorway suddenly. Kerry hadn’t even heard his footsteps, but now he looked up at the dean with hope and inquiry showing on an anxious face.

  “Well, Kerry, we’ve decided on one thing.” Professor Jahns sat down on the edge of the desk and smiled at his student.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re damn bullheaded!” Jahns was chuckling gently, easily. “The others feel like they offered you something you could do for your thesis project and you didn’t want to do it, and they don’t think you’re going to succeed in what you’re proposing to do.”

  Kerry was stunned. There it was. God, there it was. He had flunked! He fought the growing knot in his throat.

  “Now, there’s nothing wrong with your candidacy exam, you did fine on that, and you’re plenty smart, and I think you might be able to make something of this.”

  The words almost didn’t register at first. Jahns had delivered the academic death sentence, then commuted it, holding out some hope. Fighting hard for control of his emotions, Kerry listened as the dean told him to rethink his research proposal, take the other professors’ criticisms into account, and then he, Jahns, would send Kerry out in the field to see if trying to find records of earthquakes in the dirt of the past few thousands years had any possibility of success.

  “What should I work on? Should I work on the San Jacinto?” Kerry asked.

  “That’s just a little thing. Let’s go for the big one. Let’s go for the San Andreas. A lot of people are crawling around on it, but no one is doing what you’re proposing.”

  The days that followed were brutal. Despite the lifeline from Dick Jahns, and the fact that he’d passed one part of the exam, technically his research proposal had been rejected. He had failed. His carefully nurtured idea had been rejected, and only the kindness of the dean was keeping any hope alive that on reconsideration the professors would reverse themselves and accept his proposal. It was also clear that it was entirely up to him to justify the dean’s faith. If he were to keep his doctoral program on track, he would have to prove to these doubting experts that what they believed couldn’t be done, in fact, could.

  His project, Kerry realized, had become far more than just a doctoral research program. He believed in it. He believed he could do something no one had yet done with the simple concept of looking for evidence of past earthquakes in yesterday’s dirt. In fact, he was more worried about losing the chance to prove his idea, than about getting his Ph.D.

  The NSF project had not only whetted his appetite and provided good practice, it had focused him on a geologic problem that had immense social significance, which is exactly what the NSF had intended to encourage. They wanted to divert young scientists from esoteric research into areas of immediate benefit to mankind, and in this case that meant probing the possibility that earthquakes could be predicted by finding out when they had occurred in the past. By 1974 there was a lot of discussion in the scientific community about the possibility of earthquake prediction, especially with the advent of plate tectonics and the resulting models of how the different plates were moving, and how fast they were going. What he could find out by examining the San Andreas could make a difference—but now it was an uphill battle. He had to convince them that he could find the evidence in order to earn the opportunity to do so.

  Kerry Sieh was extraordinarily depressed. People jump off bridges because of such failures, he told a friend. People quit school forever because of such catastrophes. He felt devastated, yet thankful that Jahns had encouraged him to pick up the pieces. After all, he had another year of classes ahead, and during that time he would work like a demon to prove the project’s efficacy. Bob Wallace of the USGS knew the area in middle California around the Carrizo Plain that Kerry wanted to target, and he knew Dr. Wallace had done his Ph.D. thesis and additional research work on the same subject. Dr. Wallace might even be on his doctoral board, if he could stay in the ball game. Such thoughts and ideas whirled through his mind as he fought to recover from the blow. Pulling himself together, he started planning. He would get Wallace’s help. He would make it work. He simply had to.

  Chapter 15

  Carrizo Plain, California—June 1975

  Another dead fox lay before him, grotesque and pitiful, baked by the unmerciful desert heat, and looking very tiny in contrast with the stark floor of the broad valley.

  Kerry Sieh had found dozens of dead animals so far—a grisly greeting during the first day of fieldwork—many of them lying in the dry, golden brown grass on dusty, hot ridges and in the depressions along the fault trace as it cut through the Carrizo Plain. Dead rabbits, squirrels, and even songbirds littered the ground at intervals.

  What on earth? The question kept diverting Kerry’s attention from his primary mission. It was bizarre and depressing—and frightening. For nearly nine miles of parched grasslands there had been nothing alive—except him.

  The inanimacy of the scene was almost total. The arid landscape undulating ahead of him in the 105-degree heat declared itself unfit for human habitation and mocked his presence. It was an alien environment in which the brutal rays of the sun washed out the color of the place and bleached the souls of its trespassers.

  Fifteen difficult months had passed since that awful day at Stanford when Dean Jahns had told him that this project, and his degree program, were hanging by a thread.

  There were times he was certain of his ideas, and there were times—lonely times like these—when the isolation and the enormity of the task seemed to mock his confidence, making him examine in great depth whether his accomplishments were a mirage and his hopes for success merely the stage props of a dreamworld. It was a type of self-doubt which every ambitious and self-confident person faces at one time or another, the agonizing fear that someday you’ll pull yourself over the top of the highest ledge of the mountain, exhausted and excited, only to find that the mountain was merely a foothill that the real masters conquered years before. It’s the fear that someday you’ll find you’ve been dealing in self-delusion, and that you’re not the expert you thought you were. It was, he realized, an industrial-strength version of the same hollow panic that an overconfident high
school valedictorian would feel in his first semester of college if he realized he couldn’t pass freshman English, or the sickening impact to a straight A Phi Beta Kappa of receiving a failing grade on his first paper in graduate school.

  That type of fear can metastasize into an intellectual paralysis, halting the audacity and originality of new ideas carried on the shoulders of enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity—cooling the fires of passion with the wet blanket of caution and self-doubt. Kerry Sieh had faced such fears before, and had conquered them with a self-confidence born as much of his passion for geology and determination to contribute to society, as from his growing intellectual maturity. He could do it—it was just damned hard.

  The weight of his backpack was beginning to tug at Kerry’s consciousness as he pushed his two-pound hiking boots forward, committed to covering the last few miles before sunset to reach the place where he had pre-parked his bicycle early in the morning. He had left his car nearly nine miles back before beginning the day’s trek.

  Normally he would be watching his path for snakes, but it was far too hot for rattlers, if indeed any of them had survived whatever had made this desolate country a killing field. The dead animals he had seen all day were a nagging problem. What had killed them? Was this area poisoned? Such thoughts distracted him as the shimmering waves of heat beat down on the twenty-four-year-old graduate student like the growing worry that maybe the place he was searching for did not exist.1

  Kerry had become fascinated with the Carrizo Plain, and Bob Wallace had helped to build that interest. The fault trace was so visible and visceral as it ran through the area that Wallace long ago had decided that much could be learned from studying its geologic features. If he knew where to look (and what questions to ask), then there were answers to be found.2