The M7.8 earthquake on February 6, 2023 and its aftershocks have had devastating impacts on Turkey, Syria, and the surrounding countries. In response to media requests for information on this event and the lessons-learned for Southern California and other earthquake-prone areas, Dr. Lucy Jones has provided interviews, seismic expertise, and insights into community risk.
Dr. Jones wrote an op-ed piece in the L.A. Times discussing the current building code and calling on our elected officials to ensure that we have buildings we can use after the earthquake.
Read the full article here: Opinion: If you think the earthquake damage you see in Turkey can’t happen here, think again
The day following the event, Dr. Jones was featured on the FOX 11 Los Angeles News Special Report to discuss the earthquake’s impacts.
She also spoke with NBC4’s Conan Nolan about what Southern California can learn from this earthquake event:
“Southern California shares distinct similarities to the type of fault that moved and buildings that fell throughout much of Southern Turkey along the border of Syria. After one of the largest quakes to hit the region in more than a century, NBC4’s Conan Nolan spoke with seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones of Caltech and founder of the Dr. Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society about the seismic parallels of the two regions and what we hope to learn from this latest seismic calamity.”
Watch the full interview here.
“Our building code, even when enforced, is not adequate enough to protect our communities”
– Dr. Lucy Jones
In her conversation with Ron-Gong Lin II of the LA Times, Dr. Jones discussed how the San Andreas fault also has the potential to produce a M7.8 earthquake and the damage it would cause in Southern California:
“There will be 7.8s in our future. Absolutely. We have the faults, we’ve seen it in the past, it will happen again. The timing of them, as far as we can tell, is random. And there’s no way to say when it’s going to be happening. … Compared to the long-term average, we’ve been quiet for a while.”
Read the full article here.
The podcast episode this week also covered the impacts of the earthquake and the lessons-learned for other earthquake-prone areas in the U.S. Dr. Jones lays out how to get from good codes to good buildings. In the episode, she reminds us that buildings are only as good as the building code that was in place at the time it was constructed and the degree to which that code was enforced.
Listen to Episode 116 of Getting Through It: “What the U.S. Can Learn From Earthquakes in Turkey”.
Dr. Jones was able to go in depth on why the Turkey earthquake became so deadly in her Al Jazeera interview.