By now our concerns about earthquakes, specifically “The Really Big One” discussed in the New Yorker article of the same name from July — the one that quoted a FEMA official as saying “everything west of I-5 would be toast” after a magnitude 8.0 to 9.2 quake along the Cascadia subduction zone — have moved to the back of our minds.
The thoughts resurface briefly when quakes strike elsewhere in the world, such as the temblor that hit Taiwan on Saturday, killing more than 40 and leaving more than 100 still missing following the collapse of an apartment building. But the inherent unpredictability of earthquakes can make it difficult to focus concern and preparation efforts.
But there are continuing efforts at the state and federal level that have kept their focus and require continued funding and support.
As part of the state Department of Natural Resources’ supplemental budget request, Public Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark is seeking $547,000 to map earthquake and tsunami hazards and provide that information to the public and communities to help prepare.
Under the proposal, two additional department geologists and an IT specialist would be hired to educate the public on earthquake hazards; analyze the seismic safety of schools and recommend ways to strengthen them; provide information to assist in community disaster plans; map liquefaction hazards in population centers; create tsunami models to show where waves might hit; help communities identify tsunami evacuation routes; and assist communities with tsunami planning and preparedness.
On the federal level, President Barack Obama in his budget proposal to Congress this week seeks $8 million to continue work and begin to implement an early earthquake warning system called ShakeAlert. That’s joined by earlier announced efforts to increase the nation’s resilience to earthquakes.
ShakeAlert, under development by the University of Washington and other West Coast universities, would establish a network of seismic senors that would give people at least a few seconds of warning before the major shaking of an earthquake hits. The sensor network is designed to detect the first tremors of a quake, called P-waves, which are less damaging but move more quickly through the surface than the stronger, more damaging S-waves. Sensors would quickly determine the focus of the quake, then be able to give outlying communities a sense of how soon and how strong the shaking will be, providing two seconds to a half-minute warning.
While a few seconds’ notice doesn’t sound very useful, it can be enough to keep vehicles from getting on to bridges or in tunnels, for workers to move away from machinery, to allow people to take cover and shut down gas and water lines, helping to limit damage and avoid injury and death.
Previously, $13 million in federal funding has gone toward ShakeAlert. While the $8 million in the president’s budget still has to move through a Republican-controlled Congress, a spokeswoman for Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, said that its inclusion provides a starting point for Murray, who sits on the Senate’s appropriations committee, to go to bat for the program as have other West Coast members of Congress.
Scientists believe the Cascadia fault averages a significant quake about once every 243 years. With its last quake pinpointed to 1700, we’re about 70 years past the average. The seismologists in the New Yorker article estimated the chances for a quake up to a magnitude 8.6 in the next 50 years are 1 in 3; 1 in 10 for a quake up to 9.2.
Anything we can do now to prepare can limit damage and save lives.
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