I feel the earth move
"GROWING UP IN Manhattan, it never occurred to me that skyscrapers were freaky and miraculous, but now that I live in Los Angeles I'm acutely aware of how much we take on faith every day," says writer David L. Ulin, author of "The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line between Reason and Faith" (Viking), a journalistic investigation into what might be called earthquake culture. Besides exploring the theories of professional seismologists and freelance quake predictors alike, Ulin reveals what makes people who live in earthquake zones tick. Reached via telephone in Los Angeles, he explained what this has to do with the rest of us: "Since 9/11, the threat of unannounced devastation with which Californians live every day is something Americans have integrated into their lives. That may not be such a bad thing."
IDEAS: First, the $64,000 question: Can earthquakes be predicted?
ULIN: Earthquakes do seem to follow some kind of observable pattern, yet they remain a great unsolved geological mystery. Paleoseismologists, who do archaeological digs into fault lines, have concluded with some confidence that the southern segment of the San Andreas Fault, for example, breaks once every 100 to 160 years. So it's probably due to break within the next 20 years -- but that's not useful information. We don't know what day it will be.
IDEAS: Your book suggests that some of the "lunatic fringe" of earthquake predictors have been startlingly accurate in their forecasts.
ULIN: Most of the predictors out there are keeping their own records, and I've seen data that seem incredibly fudged. Still, it's possible that so-called earthquake sensitives, whose brains may contain higher-than-average levels of magnetite -- the mineral that helps whales and homing pigeons orient themselves to the earth's electromagnetic field -- do get headaches shortly before quakes, which disrupt the electromagnetic field. One fellow, Jim Berkland . . . publicly predicted a "World Series Quake" just four days before the Loma Prieta earthquake struck on Oct. 17, 1989. That was pretty impressive.
IDEAS: Do seismologists and freelance predictors share any common ground?
ULIN: Predictors feel that seismologists are withholding information from the rest of us, and seismologists point out the predictors' lack of scientific rigor, but philosophically the two camps are not so far apart -- both are engaged in a quest for meaning. Earthquakes seem to come out of nowhere, but both sides believe that there is some structure or order to earthquakes -- that they aren't simply random disruptions.
IDEAS: You claim that people who live on fault lines construct belief systems allowing them to imagine there is actually some logic to earthquakes.
ULIN: In writing the book, I came to realize that science itself is a [collection of] belief systems, or myths. Scientists take observations and experiences and put them into a system purporting to explain our daily lives -- exactly what those of us who live in Los Angeles do every day. I take my kids to school on the other side of a freeway that had to be demolished after the Northridge earthquake of 1994. I take it on faith that if the freeway comes down again, I'll be able to reach my kids or they'll be OK over there. This is not a falsehood, exactly, but a belief . . . I've constructed in order to navigate my daily life. I use what information I have, and the mythic superstructure takes care of the rest.
