A Few Seconds to Prepare

We know another big earthquake like Loma Prieta (which struck 25 years ago today) will occur in the Bay Area, but we don’t know when. However, UC Berkeley researchers are working to give us a few seconds notice.

The ShakeAlert system, developed by Richard Allen and his team, detects P waves—the fast moving energy waves that arrive first in an earthquake. The S waves that follow do most of the shaking and damage in a quake, and depending on the distance from the epicenter, can occur several seconds after the P waves. The ShakeAlert network distributes warnings to its users based on the very first P waves.

What can you do with a few seconds? A lot, says Allen and his colleague, Cal astrophysicist Josh Bloom. Automated systems can shut down, preventing further catastrophe, Allen says. BART or MUNI trains can slow to a stop and reduce the likelihood of derailment, hazardous manufacturing equipment can shut down, and chemical spills can be prevented, he says. And individuals can protect themselves. “With just a few seconds warning,” Bloom responds, “we could turn off the burners on the stove, or move ourselves and our kids away from unbolted furniture or glass windows. With tens of seconds warning we could potentially move to the part of a house or office with a heavy, protective table of us to cover under.” Allen says that 50% of the injuries in the Northridge earthquake came from falling furniture, light fixtures, and ceiling tiles. A few seconds of warning could cut those in half.

With these safety measures in mind, California passed a bill last fall to create a statewide earthquake early warning system. ShakeAlert is the first stage of that system. It currently piggybacks onto an existing seismic monitoring system throughout the state, and warnings go out to the test users on the system. Northern California test users include the UC Police Department, BART, the City of San Francisco, and Google. And when the 6.0M Napa earthquake occurred in August, successful warnings were issued. Because it all depends on the distance from the epicenter, San Francisco had a nine second warning before the shaking started, and Google had 20 seconds, according to Allen.

Why isn’t ShakeAlert available to more users? Funding. Despite the law created last year, there’s no resources allocated to build out ShakeAlert and make it more available. It needs to be more robust and reliable, says Allen, because the system it’s currently built upon wasn’t created for early warning. In addition, expansion of the warning network requires further funding. Allen believes it will need to be a combination of both private and public funding to make it work, and hopefully we’ll see several companies step-up to the plate soon. (For more information on cost specifics, this Berkeley press release has the details.)

When funding is made available, Bloom has developed an affordable early warning system for the rest of us (non-governmental, non-commercial users). As an advisor to Allen’s Seismo Lab, Bloom describes, “I was offered a beta account on the ShakeAlert network and started using the application on my laptop to test out the early warning capability,” he says. “But when I closed the laptop or when I was away from home I (and my family) were not protected. So I thought about an always on computer that could be connected to the network, could be configured and mounted (and be trusted) in the home, office, or school. It also needed to be robust to (wifi) network outages and power outages. This led me to the idea for the early warning device, built using a low-cost, low-power computer components.

“The power of the device, once the ShakeAlert network could be opened to all, would be in its ubiquity,” he continues. “The prototypes I built are capable of listening to many types of alerting systems, including tornado and tsunami alerts. Everyone could (perhaps should) have one in their house, just like a carbon monoxide detector.” (For more information on Bloom’s invention, check out this CNET post.)

So with more funding, Berkeley researchers are ready to give us warnings that could save lives and minimize damage in the next big earthquake.

ShakeAlert warning image: Berkeley Seismological Laboratory