When the Big One comes: the woman preparing LA for life after a major quake

Resilient People: Marissa Aho recently became Los Angeles' chief resilience officer. In a city prone to earthquakes, reliant on imported water and suffering a housing shortage, how could the city survive and recover after a catastrophe?

On the list of existential threats to Los Angeles, earthquakes rank highest. With dozens of fault lines running beneath and around the metropolitan area, the ever-looming threat of the Big One is a not-so-quiet concern in the back of most people's heads. The last major earthquake to hit the region was the 6.7-magnitude Northridge earthquake in 1994, which killed 57 people and caused billions of dollars worth of damage. Many predict that an even stronger earthquake is increasingly likely to strike by mid-century.

But LA isn't just idly waiting for the catastrophe. For the past year, Mayor Eric Garcetti has been working with the US Geological Survey's southern California earthquake expert Dr Lucy Jones to develop an quake resiliency strategy for the city. In October, the city enacted the showpiece of that effort, a set of aggressive seismic regulations that will require retrofits on more than 15,000 buildings across the city.