California exploring ways to fund ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system

California exploring ways to fund ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system

Published 10 April 2015

A 2008 ShakeOutreport predicts that a 7.8 magnetic quake could cause up to $200 billion in damages from buildings and infrastructure collapse, leaving households and most businesses without electricity and water for months. About 50,000 people would be injured, and more than 2,000 could die.The proposed ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system,is similar to systems in Mexico and Japan, which residents have relied on to receive notice about an incoming quake seconds before it arrives.California is exploring many options to fund the ShakeAlert system, with some officials favoring a federal-state partnership.

In the California Institute of Technology’s (Caltech) Seismo Lab, Dr. Lucy Jones, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey(USGS), helps operate the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN), a real-time visualization of what might occur when an earthquake strike parts of the state outfitted with seismic sensors.
A 2008 ShakeOut report by Jones predicts that a 7.8 magnetic quake could cause up to $200 billion in damages from buildings and infrastructure collapse, leaving households and most businesses without electricity and water for months. About 50,000 people would be injured, and more than 2,000 could die.
“The goal of the ShakeOut Earthquake Scenario was to extend the earth science into the engineering realm, to understand how an earthquake would affect buildings, freeways, infrastructure like gas piping, electrical and so on. The scenario is based on a magnitude of earthquake which we haven’t seen in a U.S. city since 1906 in San Francisco,” said Jones.
She explained that sending a warning, however, could be enough time to slow and stop trains, shut down factory operations and industrial systems, alert hospitals to stop surgeries, and give people time to take cover under a desk. California’s version of such a warning for the West Coast would cost roughly $16.1 million a year to build, operate, and maintain.
The proposed ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system, developed by Caltech, University of California-Berkeley, and University of Washington, in conjunction with the USGS is similar to systems in Mexico and Japan, which residents have relied on to receive notice about an incoming quake seconds before it arrives. ShakeAlert detects earthquakes by using CISN’s roughly 400 seismometers placed near major faults to identify primary waves (P-waves) as they move through the Earth at almost twice the speed of the earthquakes’ destructive S-waves, which shake the ground. According to PCMag, the seconds between the two waves could mean the difference between Los Angeles being a viable place to live or “The Katrina Effect,” when large amounts of people had to leave New Orleans after the 2005 hurricane.
California is exploring many options to fund the ShakeAlert system, with some officials favoring a federal-state partnership. In December, Congress allocated $5 million to the ShakeAlert system to purchase and install more seismic sensors and build new stations. The White House’s fiscal year 2016 budget requests another $5 million for ShakeAlert.
“While the United States is the most technologically advanced country in the world, we still lag dangerously behind other countries in implementing one key technology that can save lives, property and infrastructure — an Earthquake Early Warning system,” said Representative Adam Schiff (D-California). “The federal government has provided the initial funding for the system — and we will try to do more — but the state governments need to do their part. It’s my hope that by providing federal funding again this year, we can encourage reluctant state legislatures to invest in the system before the ‘big one’ hits.”