[Island Chris]

I had an interesting email exchange with a Chinese student at UCSB. She sent me an email about whether UCSB/Santa Barbara were dangerous. I said the question was vague, but that, if there was a damaging M6+ earthquake every 100 years in the area of Santa Barbara to UCSB, there was a 1 in 100 chance she would experience one in the 1 year before she finishes her studies. I said there is always something to worry about. I spared her my snarky comment about what you really have to worry about in Isla Vista, the student ghetto she lives in next to UCSB, is massacres by young people (is the 1 year anniversary of a massacre with 6 fatalities). This is not the first fatal problem they have had in Isla Vista in the last decade.

I mentioned that the construction is presumably good, and that the older buildings have been presumably retrofitted. I said I was a bit concerned that the strong ground motion may be really high. Santa Barbara and especially UCSB are in a bad location right above very large, very active thrust fault system.

I gave a talk at USGS in April showing a deep industry seismic reflection profile that ends about 1 km offshore of Campus Point, UCSB. It shows the faults, with the main one (Pitas Point fault) projecting to maybe 8 km depth at the point, and the Red Mountain fault above that. On that I showed a picture of the older 6 story building I work out of at the same horizontal scale as the profile. On the same figure I also showed a map of the USA with UCSB and my home office on opposite coasts.

Chris