Dr. Lucy Jones discusses California's numerous fault lines

When it comes to emergencies and natural disasters, one of the main concerns for residents in California is earthquakes.

World-renowned seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones says the San Andreas Fault is not the only show in town. Jones added that there are hundreds of faults in Southern California.

While she says there aren't any "new" faults they don't know about, at least big ones, scientists now have much more information about the many faults around us, even those miles below the ground. She also added that scientists learned a lot from two major earthquakes in the 80s and 90s.

"The Whittier Narrows earthquake and then the Northridge earthquake both happened on faults that didn't come all the way to the surface and therefore were not recognized until the earthquake happened," Jones said. "Because of those earthquakes, we then went and did other studies, and we basically ran CAT scans of the Los Angeles basin to map out the picture of those faults, so I think we have a pretty good handle on where they are."

The San Andreas Fault gets the headlines because it's the longest and the fastest-moving, but over the next decade, she says, it'll probably be one of the lesser-known faults that causes the most damage.

"The weaker faults have bigger earthquakes because the size of the earthquake is the length of the fault it moves, and if it's strong and lots of heterogeneities, the little earthquake begins and can't keep on rupturing down the fault and gets stopped, so you get lots of these little earthquakes instead," Jones said.

When asked if there are any fault lines that are more active than others, she said it's relative when you're talking geologic time.

"An active fault, right, geologic time, the slip accumulates on the fault literally in millimeters per year. The fastest of the San Andreas is 35 mm a year, which is about an inch and a half," Jones said. "It's like the way your fingernails grow, but imagine if you didn't cut your fingernails for 200 years."

Jones said that since the Northridge earthquake, scientists have developed a network of permanent GPS stations that allow them to accurately measure the slow motion that's accumulating as plate tectonics move.

"All of us live within probably 5 miles of an active fault and which one is going to go in your lifetime is a random subset of that," Jones said.

All that being said, she says when it comes to surviving and recovering from a major earthquake, she turns to the social sciences.

"When people ask me about earthquake preparedness, I refuse to talk about kits. I say forget the kit, talk to your neighbor," Jones said. "Look at what's happened in Altadena in the last year and that's a community that's come together and they are recovering well because they turned to each other, so it gives me a lot of hope that we will do well with the next earthquake we can if we can learn from Altadena about how to work together."