How Do Earthquake Early Warning Systems Work?

How Do Earthquake Early Warning Systems Work?

Chapter 10: Human Health and Environmental Hazards

Issues: Global, but specifically in a local environmental zone.

Summarize: In today's world, despite all of our incredible technology, we have yet to come up with an advanced system to detect earthquakes in America. In more earthquake-prone countries such as Japan and Mexico, they have developed warning systems in which the citizens of highly populated, nearby cities can receive a short warning before they are hit. For example, when the March earthquake of 2011 occurred off the coast of Japan, the nearest city of Sendai received over 15 seconds of warning. In America, our major fault line of concern is the San Andreas Fault in California. If we could create a system equal to that of Japan's or even better, we could give a city such as Seattle a warning of up to 5 minutes! Since scientists say that they don't see any way to predict earthquakes in the forseeable future, this may be the only method we have to use. This system would not only be of great importance to people across the impacted regions, but more importantly to public transport vehicles such as trains. If a major earthquake occurs without warning and derails many trains in a region, thousands of people can die. This also goes for preparing cars on bridges, airplanes taking off, people in high-story buildings, etc. The only downside to this breakthrough technology is that it would double the cost of earthquake monitoring on the West Coast from 60 million to 120 million. This is definitely a con that needs to be taken account for.

Opinion: I think that our scientists need to find a more economically sound way to monitor earthquakes. Doubling the cost of our earthquake monitoring at the expense of taxpayer dollars is a serious issue. However, I think that we do need a way to warn ourselves if an earthquake is coming. Especially in the field of public transportation, this would save many lives. Perhaps an alternative warning system or spreading awareness about this event and what to do could be just as effective. Because if people don't know the specifics of what to do, an extra few seconds isn't going to save them from nature's wrath.

Definition:

Seismology: The geophysical science of earthquakes and the mechanical properties of the earth.