Of course she chose the latter, and since this past October has served as science adviser for risk reduction at the USGS, working on a project to establish steps that people nationwide can take to minimize damage from all natural hazards.
One morning not long ago, when she was still focused primarily on California, I went with her to a meeting of the Los Angeles City Council, where she would discuss the necessary but rather tedious subject of building codes and still be greeted like a rock star, with one council member proposing an “I Love Lucy Jones” night at a local restaurant. While sitting on a hard bench awaiting her turn to speak, she took out her iPhone and clicked on an e-mailed video of a landslide. Trees, rocks and dirt all hurtled down a slope and over a roadway, suddenly more fluid than solid. As she watched it, Jones—whose brown bangs and spectacles make her look far younger than her age—radiated delight, as if the earth had a secret that she was being let in on.
“Some people don’t like my style,” she told me later, referring to how excited she gets about the earth moving. “They think I’m, like, a little too enthusiastic. I shouldn’t be enjoying myself that much in a disaster.”
But enthusiasm—for knowledge, for inquiry and for putting both to work—has driven not just her mastery of geophysics but her ability to communicate that know-how with others, and probably save lives in the bargain.
“We have an irrational fear of earthquakes, partly because they create a feeling of being out of control,” she says. “We’re afraid of dying in them, even though the risk is extremely small. You’re almost undoubtedly going to live through it. And probably your house is going to be OK. It’s the aftermath that we need to prepare for.”
Amy Wallace, a journalist in Los Angeles, has both experienced and written about earthquakes.
