Excerpt from Earthquakes in Kern County, California, During 1952: A Symposium on the Stratigraphy, Structural Geology, and Origin of the Earthquakes; Their Geologic Effects; Seismologic Measurements, Application of Seismology to Petroleum Exploration

Californians are becoming more earthquake-conscious, and rightly so, as California and Nevada have had over 90 percent of the earthquakes recorded in the United States and there is no evidence of any early decline in earthquake frequency in this area.

It behooves us, then, to be informed on earthquakes: their origin and geologic causes, their characteristics and behavior, where they are most likely to occur, their probable effects in disrupting the land surface and on engineering structures of all types, their effects on surface and subsurface water supply, the bearing of earthquakes and their causative faults on location of dams, canals, highways, and similar structures, and through better understanding - how future losses in life and property can be reduced. The principal objective of Bulletin 171 is the presentation of information on all these things.

Probably no earthquake in history has received as in tensive field study by as many scientifically trained peo ple as the arvin-tehachapi earthquake and the related aftershocks. Epicenter of the earthquake was in the southern San Joaquin Valley, a great petroleum-produc ing area, where many geologists are based. Within a few hours hundreds of geologists from the oil companies, the United States Geological Survey, California Division of Mines, Division of Highways, Division of Water Re 'sources, and the universities, were making observations of surface ground effects along the White Wolf fault, which was responsible for the earthquake. Just as quickly, field parties from the Seismological Laboratory of California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, were in the area setting up a group of portable seismographs, augmenting the records obtained at their permanent sta tions and obtaining unprecedented coverage of the after shocks of a major earthquake. Engineering coverage was also complete, with hundred of engineers and builders assessing damage to buildings, highways, railroads. And other engineering structures, and directing repair and reconstruction.

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