While movies like Towering Inferno, Tidal Wave and Earthquake were mesmerizing audiences of disaster buffs over the past year, Senior Editor Leon Jaroff and Associate Editor Frederic Golden, who writes our Science section, were carefully following a series of little-noticed events and discoveries that are leading scientists closer to achieving a critical breakthrough: the ability to predict, and possibly even control, earthquakes. Golden, who wrote this week's cover package and Jaroff, who edited it, have both been keeping tab on seismological research for several years. "We'd covered each advance piecemeal," Jaroff says. "Finally," he adds, "it seemed that the right time had come to pull the research together and let our readers know that reliable earthquake forecasts are nearly at hand."

Jaroff is a longtime student of natural disasters. With degrees in mathematics and electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, he used his scientific training in one of his early assignments in journalism, covering Midwestern tornadoes--and trying to explain their cause--for LIFE. "I saw some terrible scenes," Jaroff says, "but at least people had a little warning and could duck into storm shelters. When an earthquake strikes, there is no place to hide." Golden drew on an expertise in geology that he began cultivating years ago as a student at the Bronx High School of Science. A denizen of New York City's high-rises, he finds the whole subject of earthquakes discomforting as well as fascinating. But New York, he notes, has its advantages. "Manhattan has a lot of problems," Golden explains, "but very few faults." San Francisco Correspondent John Austin feels considerably queasier. Small wonder, considering that his talks with earthquake researchers and civic defense officials, and perusal of an Office of Emergency Preparedness study, form the basis of the story "The Day San Francisco Is Hit."

Reporter-Researcher Janice Castro, who along with F. Sydnor Vanderschmidt helped compile the research for the project, approached her assignment with a quake-wise Californian's cool. Born on a cattle ranch north of Oakland, she knew well the tale of how her greatgrandparents' chimney toppled into the kitchen during the 1906 San Francisco disaster. Like many Californians, she has often felt the earth move. The last time was in June. While Castro sat reading a Virginia Woolf novel on a mountain in the Coast Range, the earth began to "boogie and shake." Suddenly she realized that she had chosen a vacation spot "right on top of the San Andreas Fault."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.