Earlier this week ABC News reached out to Professor and Chair Dr. Jonathan Stewart to debunk the theory that the recent earthquakes were connected. In the recently released article titled, “What You Need to Know About Earthquakes After Ecuador, Japan and on San Francisco’s Anniversary”, Dr. Stewart notes, “The occurrence of earthquakes in time is more or less a random process” and went on to explain that it’s possible to predict probabilities of large earthquakes over long term — like decades — but not short term. Read the article: What You Need to Know About Earthquakes After Ecuador, Japan and on San Francisco’s Anniversary.
NBC’s article, “Are you ready for the next big earthquake?” discusses how the more scientists learn about the potential damage of strong earthquakes, building codes and infrastructure has improved. This has been especially true in Northern California since the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, according to UCLA Professor of Professor of Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Jonathan Stewart. “Our understanding of seismic risk increases over time,” Stewart said. “We’re learning about new faults; we’re learning about the induced seismicity in the east is getting a lot of attention because there are a lot of unknowns… If you go to a more active region like California or along the West Coast, we have buildings that are designed for many different levels of building codes and seismic practices. Los Angeles is a city with a lot of seismic risk, but we have old buildings that were built before we understood how these structures respond.”