Dr. Pat Abbott and Living in Earthquake Country

The grim task of searching for victims in the wake of the Jan. 1994 Northridge Earthquake in L.A.

By Tommy Hough

The author of dozens and books and papers on seismology and a professor emeritus at San Diego State University, Dr. Pat Abbott makes time before embarking on a sea voyage to the Antarctic to discuss Southern California's most dangerous seismic regions and faultlines, including the southern San Andreas Fault, the San Jacinto, Elsinore, and Newport-Inglewood faults, and the history of the last "big ones" in Southern California in 1812 and 1857.

Dr. Abbott also takes listeners on a tour of some lesser-known geologic faultlines in the region, including the Rose Canyon Fault here in San Diego, and the possibilities for damaging earthquakes along it.

​If you've ever looked out at San Diego from a high vantage point like Cowles Mountain or Iron Mountain, or the view from Cabrillo National Monument or atop the bluffs at Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve, prepare to be amazed – and possibly alarmed – upon learning how San Diego's regularly-spaced, hilly coastal intervals like Point Loma, Mt. Soledad, and Torrey Pines got there, and how the hills all have corresponding dips in the topography, like San Diego Bay and Mission Bay.

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A destroyed home in the Santa Cruz Mountains following the Oct. 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake.

A magnitude 6.5 earthquake near San Simeon killed two people in Paso Robles in Dec. 2003.

Northridge photo by James Dewey, U.S. Geological Survey (public domain)
Loma Prieta photo by J.K. Nakata, U.S. Geological Survey (public domain)
Paso Robles photo by Angela Henderson