Simon Winchester got it wrong about Portola Valley Simon Winchester got it wrong about Portola Valley (December 21, 2005)

By Marion Softky

How's this for an example of the ancient British art of condescension?

"No greater monument to hubris can be found than in a pretty little town forty miles south of San Francisco, where people have lately made untold millions from their work on designing computers and the vitals that make the work. The town is called Portola Valley..."

British author Simon Winchester then culminates his fascinating new book, "The Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906," with an extended sneer at the folks who choose to make their home in Portola Valley, astride the San Andreas Fault.

He describes the millionaires humming around winding country roads in their Volvos, playing tennis and running with honey-colored tans, shopping at "pleasant little shops selling exquisite and costly goods" (Portola Valley has two boutiques -- a hardware store and a feed store), and sipping sauvignon blanc -- all the while oblivious to the danger churning under their feet.

True or not, these vivid images of feckless hedonism ignore something really important: Portola Valley has probably done more to control building in a geologically nervous area than any city in the country, possibly the world.

In 2003, Portola Valley earned the first Earthquake Risk Reduction Award presented by the Northern California Chapter of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. It was cited for "leadership, innovation, and outstanding progress" in reducing the risks posed by earthquakes.

This is not to put down "The Crack in the Edge of the World." Best-selling author Winchester, an Oxford-trained geologist and author of "The Professor and the Madman" and "Krakatoa," connects the reader powerfully with the restless, shivering earth.

Starting with Wapakoneta, Ohio, and a foray into space, the author leads us on a rambling tour of the North American Plate of the Earth's crust with his elegant prose. We meander from Iceland to San Francisco, track the history of California, and are treated to jolting tales of earthquakes told by the people who lived through them -- before ending up in pretty Portola Valley.

Yet Portola Valley's story deserves to be told. It could serve as an example to many communities threatened by geologic hazards, which have done far less. For example, Oakland and other areas of the East Bay, which are traversed by the equally dangerous Hayward Fault. That fault crosses water lines, sewage lines, schools and hospitals.

Ever since Portola Valley incorporated in 1964, a nest of world-class geologists have been pushing the town to develop zoning and building regulations that recognize geologic hazards.

And not just earthquakes, but landslides as well. Every so often big wet winter storms would soak the hills to the point they gave way, sometimes destroying houses in and around Portola Valley and Woodside.

Then in 1964, just before Portola Valley became a town, the great Good Friday earthquake in Anchorage, Alaska. It was a wake-up call to local geologists, concentrated at Stanford and the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, that Mr. Winchester's "pretty little town" could be next in line for destruction.

Prodded by the late Dwight Crowder and other geologists, the fledgling town set out to devise ways to make living in Portola Valley as safe as possible. It established a Geologic Hazards Committee in 1967. It hired geologists to map the town for faults and landslides. And it set about incorporating the new knowledge into regulations governing where to build new houses, and how to engineer them to be safe.

In 1972, the Town Council adopted a requirement that new buildings must be set back at least 50 feet from an active earthquake fault. It was several more years before California passed a similar law.

In 1974, the town adopted a map showing landslides, and passed zoning rules precluding building on active landslides. It also adopted regulations reducing density of development on steep hillsides.

These strands of planning all came together in Portola Valley Ranch. Developer Joe Whelan, who still lives there, conceived and built a subdivision on 453 beautiful acres that included the fearsome San Andreas Fault and unstable Coal Mine Ridge. The 205 single-family homes are clustered on some 50 acres of geologically solid hills; almost 400 acres, including the fault and the landslide-prone western ridge, are preserved forever as open space for habitat, scenery, trails, and low-key recreation.

Portola Valley Ranch has received more than a dozen prestigious state, national and professional awards.

Another key player in the Portola Valley story has been George Mader, Portola Valley's town planner since it incorporated. Over 40 years, Mr. Mader has provided continuity in planning, and in converting information on local geologic risks into innovative regulations that guide planning and building.

Mr. Mader has also helped spread the Portola Valley experience around the world. He's become an international expert on land use planning and has been widely published. He has taught about land use planning and geology at Stanford, consulted for the United Nations after earthquakes all over the world, and chaired the California Seismic Safety Commission.

During his recent book tour in the Bay Area, Mr. Winchester made fun of Portola Valley for building its Town Hall on the San Andreas Fault.

Not so. The Portola Valley School was built on the fault in 1950 under the supervision of the state, when people were still casual about geologic hazards. The town bought the old school in 1974 for $120,000. The council wanted to get children off the fault, and they had outgrown the old Town Hall. Yes, it was still a hazard, they agreed. But nobody has to go to Town Hall.

Now the town has removed all activity from the fault and is actively planning a new Town Hall away from the fault. The idea is: You can't build a new building to withstand displacement of its foundation; you can build it to survive pretty violent shaking.

And for sure, in a major earthquake, the whole Bay Area will shake. Remember, the Cypress Freeway collapsed 60 miles from the epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta quake.

So Portola Valley's story is instructive; it's too bad Mr. Winchester didn't tell it. And it's not because he didn't know.

Bill Cotton, Portola Valley's town geologist for more than 30 years, recalls taking Mr. Winchester on a tour of the town and showing him what Portola Valley had done to make people safer in their homes and businesses.

When Mr. Cotton saw the book, he said, "I was appalled. I hoped he (Winchester) would make a chapter about Portola Valley."

Speaking for myself, I speak as a resident of Portola Valley who knowingly lives in a retirement community built squarely between the active traces of the San Andreas Fault years before the town incorporated.

I enjoy the good life here, keep my cache of emergency earthquake supplies up to date, and participate as a safety marshal in regular earthquake and fire drills. (I'm more afraid of wildfire in our crackling dry hills than earthquakes.)

And I prefer cabernet sauvignon. Marion Softky is a senior staff writer at the Almanac.

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