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As California waits for 'Big One', anxieties close over funding for earthquake warning system

SAN FRANCISCO – Last week, millions of residents of the area San Francisco Bay woke up startled at 2:30 in the morning by a powerful tremor that lasted several seconds. Just eight miles below them, the dreaded Hayward Fault was breaking.

Despite the significant tremors caused by the shallowness of the rupture, the earthquake had a magnitude of only 4.4 and caused no damage or serious injury. But it was a small glimpse into what could be an eventual wholesale disaster, and a grim reminder that, unlike residents in other parts of the world prone to earthquakes, West Coast residents may not know when it will arrive.

The Hayward fault is a "tectonic time bomb" due to a much larger earthquake at any time, according to the United States Geological Survey. The USGS excavations show that strong earthquakes, defined as 6.0 or more, occur approximately every 150 years. The last time a blow? A magnitude of 6.8 in 1868 – 150 years ago from 2018.

But the Hayward fault is not the only earthquake risk in the country. There are six other major fault zones only in the Bay Area, more than a dozen in California and several more throughout the United States.



Asphalted in Napa, California, after a 6.0 earthquake in the region in 2014.

For more than a decade, researchers at universities along the West Coast prone to earthquakes have been working on the development of an early warning system in which seismic sensors at Along the coast they send alerts to all those affected. zone. These warnings, which can appear at any time from seconds to minutes before the tremor begins, can provide time for trains and cars to slow down, people move away from bridges or unstable buildings, and doctors stabilize patients , among countless other actions that could save lives.

Warning systems have been used in other countries prone to earthquakes for years, including parts of Japan, Mexico, Turkey, Romania, China and Italy. The most sophisticated version is found in Japan, where a decade-long system sends announcements through radio and television broadcasts, cell phones and the Internet.

"We are more than 10 years behind [Japan]," said John Vidale, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center based at the University of Southern California, and member of the advisory committee for the effort to develop an early-entry system for the coast. west.

Vidale and other project leaders, who began receiving funding through the USGS in 2014 as ShakeAlert, hope to launch a public version of the warning system by the end of 2018.

But as its deadline approaches, insufficient and insecure project funding weighs heavily on project leaders.

The financing of seismic networks in the United States has been scarce and steadily declining for years.
Tom Heaton, professor of seismology engineering at the California Institute of Technology

"In general, earthquake financing in the United States United has been very similar to the earthquake activity; we are in a fairly deep drought, "said Tom Heaton, professor of seismology engineering at the California Institute of Technology who works at ShakeAlert, signaling the anticipation of" the big one "after years of relatively quiet seismic activity in the United States

The current general federal spending on earthquake research is around $ 60 million, Heaton said, a negligible change from the $ 37 million spent when he worked for the USGS in 1979.

"Financing for seismic networks in the United States has been meager and steadily declining for years" and inflation was taken into account, he lamented.

The annual federal spending on ShakeAlert specifically is $ 8.2 million, slightly more than half of the $ 16 million in annual federal funds needed to maintain the system, Heaton said. In fact, some California lawmakers urged the White House to meet those financing needs in the 2019 budget.

"This request reflects what we have been working on for many years," he said. Doug Toomey, professor of seismology at the University of Oregon who works on the project, on the efforts of lawmakers.

"We have made good progress, but there is a lot of tension in the project at this time with the delivery without having the resources to do what we really want, "said Heaton.



The remains of the Cypress Expressway in Oakland, California, following the 1989 Bay Area earthquake.

But they are not holding their breath. The Department of the Interior of President Donald Trump in his initial budget plan last year has already threatened to completely exhaust the funds of ShakeAlert.

While Congress reinstated that funding in the latest version of the spending bill it hopes to pass this month, the possibility of losing it has shaken the project's leaders.

"If they really followed it [eliminating funding] it would have been a complete stop" and software engineers working to develop the warning system would have been fired, Heaton said.

"You really need people who understand the software and how to develop it," he continued. "If we had fired the team we have, it would have taken us years to put it back together."

Any indication that the federal government is not committed to ShakeAlert, Toomey said, could hamper the project.

"If funding is not secure, we can not hire the best people to develop and maintain the system," he said.

Vidale is "cautiously optimistic" that the project will go on.

"It seems that things are going well, but it would not be difficult to deviate if budget negotiations go the wrong way," he said.

 Film students at the University of Southern California participate in a 2015 earthquake drill. & Nbsp;



Film students at the University of Southern California participate in a 2015 earthquake drill.

Scientists working at ShakeAlert say that much of their focus in 2018 will be on getting ShakeAlert warnings in most classrooms before a full public version is published. But to do that, more software engineering is needed to automate the way seismic sensors analyze earthquake signals and instantaneously convert those signals to public alerts.

Public transportation networks such as Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) are also a high priority, they said.

Ultimately, ShakeAlert members expect automatic text message alerts to be sent like those distributed in Japan. But cell phone service providers have told the ShakeAlert team that the technology in US phones. UU It is likely that many years will be missing.

"There is simply no way to send a signal to cell phones in a second or two, which is what we would like," said Vidale.

In the next few months, Heaton said they plan to launch a more detailed budget request that describes the costs of each need. He also hopes that more private partners are willing to help bring the system to the public.

"But I doubt they will do anything until they feel a major earthquake," he said. "Earthquakes do not happen very often, but after the earthquake people are completely scared and want to do something."

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