Literally my first memory is of an earthquake.

When I was two years old here in Southern California,

and it's just my mother gathering up us kids

and getting us to go into the hallway away from the windows

and she covered us with her body.

So it was a very distinct memory. Lucy Jones is a seismologist who's devoted her career to trying

to understand and prepare for earthquakes, which means that when one hits, she drops everything to

respond.

One night, Lucy was sitting outside their home with her husband, who's also a seismologist,

and her son, Niels, and a few of his friends were there too.

Yeah, it was about 9 o'clock at night, and an earthquake happened.

Strong enough that we all look at each other, but it's over in a few seconds. And my husband and I stood up.

Okay, Neils, you're going to lock up, right?

Because we needed to go to work.

And this friend of his had been a friend from junior high,

I always wondered what happened in this house when an earthquake happened.

The San Andreas Fault, the most famous fault line in America, runs through Southern California,

where Lucy lives.

The Fault Line actually figures into her own family's history.

My great-great-grandparents are literally buried in the San Andreas Fault.

They settled in eastern California, a place called Banning, and the cemetery was put into the fault because it's a really easy place to dig, because the ground's all broken up, right?

They didn't know it was the San Andreas fault when they put in the cemetery.

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