Earthquake warningCalif.’s earthquake early warning system bill approved

California’s earthquake early warning system, State Senate Bill 135, was approved by Governor Jerry Brown on 24 September 2013. The bill introduced by Senator Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima) requires the Office of Emergency Services (OES) to develop a comprehensive statewide earthquake early warning system to alert Californians in advance of shaking from an earthquake.

“When it comes to earthquakes in California, it is not a matter of if, but when,” said Padilla. “With Governor Brown’s signature, the process of developing a statewide earthquake early warning system has begun. When the system is up and running, Californians will be provided critical seconds to take cover, assist loved ones, or pull over safely to the side of the road. It will allow time to stop a train and power down critical infrastructure. Most importantly, it will save lives,” he said.

The California Aggie reports that the OES, along with the California Seismic Safety Commission, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the California Geological Survey (CGS), UC Berkeley (UCB), and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS),will lead the effort to develop the early warning system. The system would issue alerts based on data from a range of seismometers around California located at fault lines and densely populated areas.

The data would be processed by “primary-wave” (p-wave), followed by “secondary wave” (s-wave).

Jennifer Strauss of the Berkeley Seismology Lab talked with the Aggie about the process of earthquake early detection. “As you get further from the epicenter [of the earthquake] the p-wave outruns the s-wave. If you have enough seismometers around where there are faults, you can measure that first p-wave so that you can figure out when the s-wave is coming and get that out to the public,” Strauss said. “We are talking tens of seconds. We are figuring out how to craft a public system and decide what the alerts are going to look like. One major issue is that these alerts need to go out very quickly — in 20 seconds you need to get that information out. If, for example, San Francisco were to text a warning, it would take hours. This is why we are figuring out a systematic distribution method.”

OES and partnering organizations are considering using cell phone alerts as a way to notify the public. A pilot beta-system issued in March 2013 was able to send out a 30-second warning system for a 4.7 magnitude Riverside County desert earthquake.

“There are a lot of ideas on how it will work. The hope is to provide alerts that produce automated changes. Let’s say at the time of an earthquake, a 30-second warning would allow a BART train in a tunnel the ability to take action and stop automatically. Or consider an assembly line in Silicon Valley that, with an automated heads-up could potentially stop processes and shut down to prevent catastrophic damage,” said Kelly Huston, deputy director for OES.

Strauss suggests that cell phones are part of a multi-channel approach that would be adopted. “Cell phones are a good method. Additionally, we’ll be utilizing TV and radio. Different businesses can have internal mechanisms that work best for their company protocols,” she said.

Full funding source for the project has yet to be confirmed, and will be determined by the OES by the beginning of 2016. “In order to have the full-fledged program that what we think of as robust, we would need about $80 million for the first five years. The money would go to hire more people, buy a bunch more seismometers and [pay for the] cost [of] operations. For the next five years after that we would just need additional yearly funding,” Strauss said.