'Common sense' early warning system starved for funding, Dems complain

E&E News
By Dylan Brown
June 11, 2014

The buzz of a flash flood warning interrupted a House Natural Resources subcommittee hearing yesterday in Washington, D.C.

It was fitting, Chairman Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) said, that it came during a panel discussion on the lack of an earthquake early alert system in the United States.

Lamborn and Democrats on the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, differed over who's to blame, but agreed that Congress must find the money to pay for a system that could save lives up and down the West Coast as the threat of a large-scale quake looms large.

According to U.S. Geological Society senior adviser William Leith, there is a 99.7 percent chance of at least a magnitude-6.7 earthquake rocking California within 30 years. Washington state and Oregon are due for a magnitude-9 temblor.

"A single large event could cause the thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of injuries from the shaking alone, and many more from possible resulting fires, hazards and other hardships," Leith said.

The entire panel agreed -- the technology for a warning system exists.

Using hundreds of seismometers to sense the start of a quake, early alert systems send out alerts via smartphones, radio and television, automatically slow trains to prevent derailments and close bridges.

Systems installed in Mexico and Japan have already been tested. Not a single train derailed during the 9.0 earthquake that caused Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011. Last April, Mexico's system gave Mexico City more than a minute to prepare after a 7.2 magnitude shake.

Both countries only got to work on their systems following large, deadly quakes, however, something University of California, Berkeley, researcher Richard Allen wants the United States to avoid.

"If there was an earthquake today, we would build this warning system tomorrow," he said.

For the past two years, Allen has collaborated on a pilot system called "ShakeAlert," which recently sent out warnings within seconds of three temblors that shook the Los Angeles region in recent months.

The demonstration was built on the existing monitoring capabilities of USGS's Advanced National Seismic System. The AANS network has tripled in size since receiving $20 million from the 2009 stimulus. The 2,500 stations collecting data on seismic activity would serve as the backbone of a West Coast alert system, drastically reducing its cost.

The technology is ready for the big time, advocates said, but funding remains a problem.

Despite California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) authorizing a system last year based on a public-private partnership, none of the estimated $120 million to establish and operate it for five years was allocated.

Federal support has also fallen short, prompting Lamborn to direct his ire at USGS and the Obama administration.

"The lack of focus and investment in earthquake early warning is a deep concern," he said.

Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.), whose district is south of Los Angeles, pointed the finger back at Congress. He praised the AANS improvements and argued the geologic agency's budget is stretched too thin.

Washington state emergency manager John Schelling said other states are feeling the pinch as well. Direct losses have stemmed from the lapse of the National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program and Tsunami Warning and Education Act, both of which Congress has failed to reauthorize.

Earthquake preparedness is already a part of building codes, so Lowenthal said an early alert system should be "common sense."

"When we prepare, lives are saved," he said.

Yet, to the chagrin of Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), the ranking member of the full Natural Resources panel, other countries are still beating the United States to the punch.

"It's pretty darn pathetic that countries like Romania, Mexico and now Mongolia are doing more to protect their citizens from severe damage in case of an earthquake than the United States of America," he said.

Just offshore from Washington and DeFazio's home state of Oregon lies the volatile Cascadia Subduction Zone, which is due for a massive quake.

"We know that enough energy has built up ... to power a magnitude-9 quake," University of Oregon geology professor Douglas Toomey said. "The Pacific Northwest is unprepared for a catastrophe of this scale."

Monitoring the ocean fault would require a larger investment. Toomey said the Japanese are currently investing $1 billion in underwater sensors and communications lines. Currently, his Cascadia Initiative, the largest amphibious array ever in the United States, is only a $30 million project funded by the National Science Foundation.

Toomey wants that effort expanded into an offshore alert system that could avert some of the $60 billion in damages the Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates would be caused by a magnitude-9 temblor.

With research indicating such a quake would begin off the Northern California coast, the system would give Portland, Ore., as much as three minutes and Seattle up to five minutes to get ready.

Minutes could be vital to the 1,000 schools a state of Oregon study found would collapse if the Richter scales topped 9.

"I asked a principal of a local elementary school, which was built in 1926, how long it would take to evacuate all 350 students," Toomey said. "The answer? A minute and a half."

With lives at stake, DeFazio mocked a "dysfunctional Congress" for failing to prioritize the system over other budget items.

"In order to provide the saving of thousands of lives and tens of billions of dollars in damage, we can't afford 12 hours of spending at the Pentagon around here," he said. "This is beyond the point of absurdity, it's becoming essentially negligent to the point of being criminal."