California Earthquakes: Science, Risk, and the Politics of Hazard Mitigation (review)

California Earthquakes recounts the story of a small group of scientists and engineers who embraced the Progressive Era's faith in science and technology as the one best way to safeguard people from a natural hazard. Their efforts throughout the twentieth century, argues Carl-Henry Geschwind, resulted in the modern "regulatory-state" apparatus that supports earthquake-prediction research and seeks to protect society from seismic hazard. This is a compelling story filled with rich personalities and intriguing political maneuverings, and it illuminates the role of science and, to a lesser extent, technology in the modern world.

Geschwind tells his story chronologically, beginning with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. This sparked the first sustained interest in seismology, from which California geologists (seismologists) built a basic scientific infrastructure and public-relations campaign on behalf of seismic research. As more earthquakes struck California between 1925 and 1933, the tiny but growing seismological community was joined by structural engineers, also a new professional group, and together they devised the framework of a state regulatory apparatus for building design. After World War II, seismologists and engineers returned to their prewar research, only to discover that times had changed, quite in their favor. Because cold war political leaders perceived a similarity between designing buildings to protect against nuclear blast and against earthquakes, the floodgates of federal support opened and the seismological community expanded rapidly.

In the wake of the 8.5-magnitude Alaska quake in 1964, this community began to press for better preparation for the future. It convinced the California state legislature to develop a comprehensive plan for mitigating the state's earthquake hazards. Building codes were tightened, new land-use measures introduced, schools retrofitted. Seismologists also pushed for further research in earthquake prediction, which resulted in establishment of a National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. By the 1980s, concludes Geschwind, "the framework for government regulation of earthquake hazards was complete" (p. 213), an achievement he credits to the professional seismological community.

With California Earthquakes, Geschwind joins Theodore Steinberg, who in Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America (2000) takes the history of natural hazards—earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, wildfires—beyond simply the telling of sensational stories about calamities. Whereas Steinberg looked at the role of politics and economics in the shaping of "natural" disasters, Geschwind focuses on the scientific and technical community's efforts to bring such seemingly random seismic events under human control. He does an excellent job of tracing seismology from its primitive beginnings, nicely weaving together the political and economic context in which the seismological community labored. But he also tells a rather Whiggish tale of science carried to an inevitable triumph.

I was particularly struck by Geschwind's emphasis on science over engineering. In discussing the 1906 earthquake, he carefully details how a few locally based geologists led investigations and ultimately appealed for greater seismic safety through the formation of the Seismological Society of America (SSA); however, he discounts the role of the few local structural engineers who joined geologists in the field to study the effects of the quake, served on state investigative committees and on the city's reconstruction task force, formed their own Structural Association of San Francisco, and joined the scientists in the formation of the SSA.

To be sure, Geschwind knows his sources. But I believe his comment that "few engineers saw the need for greater seismic safety" (p. 32), rather than a few engineers, is rooted in a presumption that engineering is the handmaiden to science. He admits that seismic scientists were rarely interested in aseismic structural design; mostly, they devoted their efforts to analyzing and mapping faults, measuring earthquake intensity, and predicting temblors. This is not to say that Gershwind ignores engineers, although he does skip over development of the strong motion seismograph program essential to developing aseismic design. But seismic...