joining us live now is doctor lucy jones, founder and chief scientist at the doctor lucy jones centerty. doctor jones, thanks for joining us. >> i'm glad to be here. >> really a pleasure to have you, by the way. i follow you on blue sky. just wanted you to know that. thank you. all right. so how large is this magnitude 7.0. because i've lived in the bay area a long time, i think the biggest i experienced was the 6.9 loma prieta. so historically and scientifically, talk about a 7.0, right? >> it's not that different from loma prieta 6.9. it's relatively close. what's different is this is offshore. whereas of course, loma prieta was right underneath people up there in the santa cruz mountains. and we forget that. i mean, that magnitude says the total energy released by the earthquake, the energy that gets to you and what you perceive depends very strongly on how far away you are from the source of that energy. and the fact that this was offshore just means that there's, you know, you'll have lots of things thrown off of shelves at the sort of intensity. seven intensity, eight that you'd

seismologist lucy jones joins us live on our 3 p.m.ewscast to explain how tsunamis form and why today we were safe from one. >> tsunami happens because an earthquake changes the shape of the sea floor. and if the earthquake pushes the ground up and over the other side, then the water that used to be there has to go somewhere else. and that's the tsunami wave in this earthquake. the ground moves sideways. it was a strike slip earthquake. and that means that we didn't really change the shape of the sea floor much. so once we saw the what's called the focal mechanism showing us it was the strikes, the earthquake, we recognized that the chances of it having a damaging tsunami is, is very, very low. and even even if it had been a thrust fault, a 7.0 isn't a very big fault. and the big tsunamis happen because you move a huge amount of water. noah's principle is that they warn at seven and a half, and there's a couple of places like this one where they warn at seven. quite why this is considered quite so dangerous. i'm not sure. but once they

and from what i understand, you know, from talking to doctor lucy jones, we talk about how the shaking on 1st may also create some movement on some nearby faults. so that's another thing that we have to watch out for once again, with these plates coming together, that shaking that's happening, that may be a possibility that we could see some other faults that are nearby also get a little bit more active because of that shift of the land that's happening. okay. well, you were talking about that tsunami warning. we got those alerts on our phones. i mean, every phone pretty much in the newsroom went off. likely you felt you heard that as well at your home. scott mcgrew. i know has been monitoring that of what you can expect when that happens, because we not only got these from shake alert, we got the national weather service. they sent that tsunami off to us. so these are these alerts that we've been monitoring about that we've been talking about to tell people to get prepared because when it happens you're going to get that alert. yeah, that's exactly right. good morning to you. and we a

for more now we're joined live by world-renowned seismologist doctor lucy jones, dr jones, thanks forng with us. thanks for having me. you've really dedicated your life to helping people deal with these things. how would you assess how things went this morning? >> i think people handled it pretty well. the good news is even though is a lot very large earthquake. it was far enough offshore that there wasn't really strong shaking on land. but we had was, you know that part of california is used to these earthquakes and therefore knows how to handle pretty active area there certainly i would guess it would be the most powerful quake in somewhat. >> almost 30 years. out it was very similar earthquake just a few years ago. the rio dell earthquake. it was closer to shore that when it did more damage, they've had a magnitude 7.3 in 1992. they had another one somewhere in the 2, thousands. that part of california gets those earthquakes but being offshore. very, very sparsely populated. that doesn't do as much damage, so rocking and rolling up. there are. can we expect more on the heels of thi

this kron four's grant lotus and vicki liviakis spoke with world-renowned seismologists doctor lucy jonesve really dedicated your life to helping people deal with these things. how would you assess how things went this morning? >>i think people handled it pretty well. the good news is even though is a lot very large earthquake. it was far enough offshore that there wasn't really strong shaking on land. >>and but we had was, you know that part of california is used to these earthquakes and therefore knows how to handle pretty active area there certainly i would guess it would be the most powerful quake in somewhat. >>almost 30 years. >>on? no, no, no, all are out there was a very similar earthquake just a few years ago. the rio dell earthquake. it was closer to shore that when they did more damage. >>they've had a magnitude 7.3 in 1992, then another one somewhere in the 2, thousands. that part of california gets those earthquakes but being offshore. very, very sparsely populated. that doesn't do as much damage, so rocking and rolling up. there are. can we expect more on the heels of this o