Federal government won’t fund our earthquake system? Build it and bill them later

Let’s talk early warning systems.

This is your semi-regular reminder that we live in a seismic fault zone, and there’s that Cascadia Subduction Zone right off the West Coast.

A major earthquake is coming, we just don’t know when. But an effort is underway to alert us prior to a big quake. It’s a program that could save thousands of lives, as long as it is actually finished.

Early warning systems are already in place in Mexico and Japan. People in Japan are already receiving more than a 1-minute warning before large quakes.

As CBS’s Carter Evans reported this week, the USGS is on track to build a similar system in the U.S.

In a real world scenario, the warning system, called ShakeAlert, will give us time to shut down critical infrastructure and services and get to safety before shaking begins.

A 30-second warning doesn’t seem like that much time.

“It doesn’t. It doesn’t, right?” Josh Bashioum with Early Warning Labs told CBS. “But it takes about 12 seconds to stop a commuter train or, about 10 seconds to take an elevator to the closest floor, or about 3 seconds to get under a desk. You can save a lot of lives.”

CBS reports more than 700 sensors, many which are in southern California, are detecting seismic waves from the epicenter of quakes. The sensor passes along data for when shaking will begin.

USGS still needs nearly 1,000 more sensors across the U.S., Carter Evans reports. But it’s now unclear whether the USGS will receive the funding for those sensors.

“If the president’s budget is passed by Congress, the program will be stopped because this is one of the things being eliminated,” Lucy Jones, who is helping develop the warning system, told CBS.

And Jones doesn’t want to wait around for thousands of people to die before the system is finally funded.

If Congress does cut the program from the budget, Northern California, Oregon, and Washington will be left without many of the needed sensors — although the ShakeAlert system has successfully warned of quakes before they happen in the Pacific Northwest.

Of all the — what word shall I use — stupid things to cut, that’s a stupid cut, right?

Thirty seconds. I’m sure a bureaucrat looks at that number and asks what good is that?

It’s everything. You can get to the street in 30 seconds. You can leave a vulnerable area and get to a more secure location in 30 seconds.

We’re probably more aware of earthquakes than people on the East Coast, KIRO Radio’s Colleen O’Brien points out. We have to think about the rest of America and how much they prioritize an early warning system.

But if that’s the case, then what about the tsunami and tornado warning systems?

I say we finance ShakeAlert ourselves and bill the government later.

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