It's the unavoidable series of questions Christine Goulet gets every time she's asked what she does for a living.
"When is the next big earthquake coming? Do you know where? When should we get ready?" Goulet, director of the U.S. Geological Survey's Earthquake Science Center in Los Angeles, told USA TODAY. "It's almost without fail once they know I study earthquakes. If I received a dollar every time I'm asked, I'd be rich."
Goulet has answers, but she can't predict the future.
The ominous truth: The Big One could happen any time, and there's more than one possible "Big One."
"It's gonna happen. An earthquake could be in a matter of minutes, the next hour, tomorrow, or in a week from now, we can't predict that precisely at this time. We don't know," Goulet said. "But the point in general is we want and need to prepare for them."
