Seismologist: Earthquake in Victoria, B.C. shows early detection system ‘has a ways to go’

In terms of actual danger from last night’s 4.8 magnitude earthquake, there really isn’t much. But when it comes to what it showed about safety systems, there might be room for a rumble of concern.

University of Washington Seismologist John Vidale said the early warning detection system was running in “test mode” and recognized the earthquake within about 10 seconds from when it happened, which is before the strongest waves even reached the surface of the earth. And while the system performed “as we expected” it’s still not perfect.

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“It told us that a magnitude 4.3 earthquake had happened and within a few seconds the estimate climbed to the right number,” he said. “But it’s still under development, it’s not as fast as it should be and it would produce false alarms at the moment. And we have to make sure that we communicate with the public in ways they understand. So it has a ways to go before we actually send it out to the general public.”

The early detection system has been in the works for years. The system is meant to detect an initial fast-moving jolt from a quake and alert people before stronger shaking begins.

Tuesday’s quake was the biggest in the Puget Sound and SW Canada since Nisqually in 2001, and Vidale, who is also the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network director, said it was felt by hundreds of thousands of people and reported by at least 10,000 to their website. He called the earthquake “very useful” for he and others studying earthquakes and building public safety systems. Despite the minor kinks to the current system, he said the biggest obstacle is that it’s currently only half-funded.

“But we expect we’re on track to get to full funding within a couple of years,” he said.

Vidale said he was “disappointed” that he didn’t feel the quake and regretted not having his early warning system running on his computer at home.

“It would have given me 10 or 20 seconds warning that the shaking was coming, but now I first saw it light up my Facebook page,” he said.

“We (State seismologists) were kind of gleeful that our systems would be run through their paces with an earthquake bigger than their usual ones and twos we have here.”

Earthquake Tracker

Vidale said a quake this powerful allows them to look at the deeper reverberations and geological basins in Everett, Tacoma and Seattle, which he says tend to “focus energy and produce pockets of amplified motion.”

“But it takes a powerful source to light up where the ground has that amplification, so earthquakes like this are very useful for identifying what’s the most hazardous places around our region,” he said.

As for this size of quake, Vidale said they are expected every decade or so from our subduction zone.

“We’ve had three earthquakes close to magnitude 7 in the last 100 years in very similar place to this one, both further south than Puget Sound,” he said. “It’s no surprise and we’ve had a whole series of ones of this one over the years, so it’s one of the sort of three or four kinds of earthquakes that threaten basically our older buildings and highways around here.”

More than anything, he called the big shake a “learning opportunity” and “a way to test the systems we have in place to make sure they’re working.” He said aftershocks are always possible, but deep ones like this tend to have few.

“Even the biggest of these deep earthquakes make very few aftershocks, that’s why I wouldn’t say today is a particularly dangerous day for earthquakes,” he said.

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