he Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) trains of San Francisco were not running at 3.20 a.m. on 24 August when a magnitude-6 earthquake hit the region. But the BART computers were working — and they knew what was about to happen 10 seconds before the ground started shaking, thanks to an alert from California’s prototype warning system. Had the quake struck in the middle of the day, the computers would have instructed the trains to slow to a stop — potentially avoiding a derailment and saving the lives of passengers.With such a scenario in mind, researchers are pushing hard to wire a much broader swathe of the US west coast, from California to Washington, with a fully fledged earthquake warning system. The US$120-million project has not yet secured funding, but the latest quake, centred near Napa, California, which caused several hundred million dollars’ worth of damage, could tip political fortunes in its favour. Seismologists and emergency-services managers will discuss the practicalities of implementing such systems at a conference starting on 3 September at the University of California, Berkeley.“I’m hoping the Napa quake has created a sense of urgency,” says Alex Padilla, a California state senator who represents a district near Los Angeles. Padilla introduced a bill that Governor Jerry Brown signed into law last September, which gives the state until 2016 to set up an early-warning system before the legislation expires.Yet the law does not specify where the $80 million for California’s part of the system would come from. That puts US seismologists at a crucial turning point: if they are unable to push through an early-warning system in time, they might struggle to get one at all.Several countries, including Mexico and Japan, have extensive warning systems in place to protect their key infrastructures. And in Istanbul, seismic sensors allow one of Turkey’s main natural-gas providers to shut down its pipelines if the ground is about to start shaking. Similar warnings flow to nuclear power plants in Romania.California has the backbone of a warning system — ShakeAlert, a project run by a consortium of universities and the US Geological Survey (USGS). The system uses real-time information from seismic waves arriving at California’s sensor network to send warnings that secondary, more damaging waves are on their way. The alerts go to scientists as well as to about 150 organizations, emergency managers and other testers.

The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) trains of San Francisco were not running at 3.20 a.m. on 24 August when a magnitude-6 earthquake hit the region. But the BART computers were working — and they knew what was about to happen 10 seconds before the ground started shaking, thanks to an alert from California’s prototype warning system. Had the quake struck in the middle of the day, the computers would have instructed the trains to slow to a stop — potentially avoiding a derailment and saving the lives of passengers.


With such a scenario in mind, researchers are pushing hard to wire a much broader swathe of the US west coast, from California to Washington, with a fully fledged earthquake warning system. The US$120-million project has not yet secured funding, but the latest quake, centred near Napa, California, which caused several hundred million dollars’ worth of damage, could tip political fortunes in its favour. Seismologists and emergency-services managers will discuss the practicalities of implementing such systems at a conference starting on 3 September at the University of California, Berkeley.
“I’m hoping the Napa quake has created a sense of urgency,” says Alex Padilla, a California state senator who represents a district near Los Angeles. Padilla introduced a bill that Governor Jerry Brown signed into law last September, which gives the state until 2016 to set up an early-warning system before the legislation expires.
Yet the law does not specify where the $80 million for California’s part of the system would come from. That puts US seismologists at a crucial turning point: if they are unable to push through an early-warning system in time, they might struggle to get one at all.
Several countries, including Mexico and Japan, have extensive warning systems in place to protect their key infrastructures. And in Istanbul, seismic sensors allow one of Turkey’s main natural-gas providers to shut down its pipelines if the ground is about to start shaking. Similar warnings flow to nuclear power plants in Romania.
California has the backbone of a warning system — ShakeAlert, a project run by a consortium of universities and the US Geological Survey (USGS). The system uses real-time information from seismic waves arriving at California’s sensor network to send warnings that secondary, more damaging waves are on their way. The alerts go to scientists as well as to about 150 organizations, emergency managers and other testers.

Amazing Geology

Amazing Geology