Public Safety

Scientists Fly Over Southern Calif. To Assess Faults, Earthquake Risk

By Amy Isackson / Border Reporter

Published July 2, 2010 at 1:05 PM PDT

This story was published more than 13 years ago.

Scientists Fly Over Southern Calif. To Assess Faults, Earthquake Risk

Scientists are concerned the Easter Day magnitude 7.2 earthquake has put more pressure on two Southern California faults.

Scientists are concerned the Easter Day magnitude 7.2 earthquake has put more pressure on two Southern California faults.

Andrea Donnelan, a geophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says scientists began flying a jet equipped with a radar from the Mexican border north to Temecula last year because they were concerned about the Elsinore and San Jacinto faults.

Donnelan says both faults have been dormant for about a century and are capable of generating magnitude seven quakes or higher.

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"So what we did was we had a flight to see if the ground has changed since the earthquake occurred, because strain changes over time," said Donnelan. "And we want to understand if there's some motion indicative of causing higher stress on faults to the north."

The Elsinore Fault runs from Ocotillo north through Julian and Temecula.

The San Jacinto Fault begins east of Borrego Springs and goes north through Hemet.

Donnelan hopes her research will help scientists better predict earthquakes, to narrow down the forecast from 30 years to five or 10.

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Amy Isackson

Amy Isackson was the border reporter at KPBS from 2004 to 2011. She covered breaking news and feature stories on California-Mexico border issues and immigration, for local and national broadcast. Amy got her start in public radio by pitching a series of stories about rural New Zealand - horse dentistry and sheep sheering - to Radio New Zealand's "Country Life" program. She then worked with Peabody Award-winning radio producers Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson, to help create the Sonic Memorial, a series of stories on the World Trade Center before, during and after 9/11. Amy's work has been recognized with awards from the Associated Press Television-Radio Association of California and Nevada, the California Chicano News Media Association, and the San Diego Press Club. She won the Sol Price Prize for Responsible Journalism in 2009 from the Society of Professional Journalists for her story about high school students smuggling people and drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border. Prior to venturing into the wonderful world of public radio, Amy worked for Yahoo! Inc. for nearly five years as an editorial surfer, associate producer and broadcast communications manager. She majored in Latin American History at Williams College. She grew up in San Diego and made frequent trips south of the border.

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