Earthquake Alert

Honeycombed with literally thousands of geological faults, California has already had its share of earthquakes. But, warns a California Institute of Technology geophysicist, the state may soon be in for another. James Whitcomb, 35, said last week measurements suggest that an earthquake ranging in magnitude from 5.5 to 6.5 on the Richter scale could occur within the next year in an area 87 miles in diameter that covers part of Los Angeles and the San Fernando and Antelope valleys. It includes the portion of the San Fernando where a major upheaval killed 58 people in 1971 and part of the area being watched by geophysicists because of a mysterious phenomenon called the Palmdale bulge (TIME, April 19).

Whitcomb is using an experimental earthquake-prediction technique developed in the Soviet Union and successfully employed by Columbia University scientists to predict a small temblor in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. The method involves measurement of variations in the velocities of sound waves traveling through subsurface rock. While no one, from scientists to civil defense authorities, is dismissing Whitcomb's prediction, his data will come under intense scrutiny by experts of the California Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council within the next two weeks.

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