Utah faces a high earthquake threat, so why did it cancel its preparedness committee?

What may be the deadliest coin toss disaster in Utah in fifty years.

That's the rough probability that hundreds of thousands of Utahns could suddenly find themselves without shelter and water supplies for months.

The Wasatch Fault segment in the Salt Lake Valley is at a critical point in a recurring geological cycle of massive earthquakes every 1,400 years, experts say. Earthquake forecasters say it's just a matter of when, not if, a quake will happen.

A major earthquake — a magnitude 6.75 quake with horrific destructive power capable of destroying homes, schools and vital infrastructure across the valley — could cause short-term economic losses of at least $75 billion.

Nearly half of the thousands of earthquake-related deaths predicted by the worst-case models resulted from severe damage to more than 140,000 unreinforced stone buildings in the area, many of them homes built before the 1970s.

These risks are well known in Utah’s government, education, and emergency planning circles, as highlighted by the annual Operation Great Shaking Utah, a state-sponsored awareness campaign. The guiding motto for the campaign is “Be Prepared, Utah.”

“Utah is not prepared for a major earthquake on the Washatch Fault,” said a 2015 report by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, a national nonprofit organization focused on earthquake resilience.

For nearly three decades, the state's Earthquake Safety Commission—a group of scientists, structural engineers, architects, government officials and other stakeholders—has worked to improve earthquake preparedness.

However, in their last session, lawmakers in Congress voted to “abolish” the committee, without any formal explanation and with little debate.

“This vote confuses me,” Sen. Kathleen Rippey, D-Cottonwood Heights, said at the time. “Why don’t you want to protect people in the state of Utah?”

Committee members are scheduled to meet on Thursday to begin dismantling the committee's work.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Scenes of the devastation caused by the earthquake in Magna, March 24, 2020, and March 3, 2021.

“a great loss”

Originally tasked by state legislators in 1994 with identifying earthquake hazards and mitigation methods, the Seismic Safety Commission has served as a constant harbinger of risk and safety.

Participants worked closely with academics to model what a massive earthquake might look like in the Washatchee Front, including the potential for landslides, large surface ruptures, and damage from soil liquefaction.

Its key recommendations over the years include calls to review building safety standards and rehabilitate schools; create an earthquake early warning system; and upgrade facilities such as hospitals along with utility and transportation networks to keep them operational in the event of a major earthquake.

The committee also sought federal grants to develop the University of Utah's Marriott Library, and called for making the area's drinking water system more resilient.

“We were actually doing what the original law said,” said Keith Cooper, director of the UCLA Seismic Observatory and former committee chairman. “I felt people took it seriously.”

Members say the committee is the only place where earthquake experts and professionals across industries can plan and recommend safety policy.

With the commission now defunct, its current vice chair, Jessica Chappell, added that Utah is giving up “the only place where experts in the state come together to share ideas and information.”

“I see it as a huge loss,” Chappell said.

risky brick

Some fear that without the commission's work, Utahns — from residents of old brick homes to city officials responsible for building codes — will not continue to prepare for what could be one of the worst natural disasters in the nation's history.

“One of the things we say as seismologists is: Earthquakes don't kill people, buildings kill people,” Cooper said.

The housing stock in Bee State, in particular, is full of unreinforced masonry structures – usually made of brick without reinforcing steel, making them highly susceptible to damage from vibration.

“Utah is unique among the most earthquake-prone states in the United States in having many single-family dwellings built of unreinforced brick,” according to a 2009 report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

These gaps are not limited to homes. At least 130 school campuses serving more than 70,000 students in the state likely do not have reinforced masonry buildings—a fact highlighted in several commission reports, along with recommendations for structural upgrades.

The 5.7-magnitude Magna earthquake in 2020 severely damaged Westlake STEM Middle School, making it unsafe to enter. The roof of Cyprus High School collapsed. The Earthquake Commission concluded in its 2024 report that students and staff would have been injured or killed had they been in the school at the time.

Meanwhile, a magnitude 7 earthquake would release about 100 times more energy than the Magna quake, and according to the committee's studies, “could be more devastating to many schools with similar vulnerabilities.”

(Francisco Quilceth | The Salt Lake Tribune) West Lake Junior High School at 3400 South 3450 West in West Valley City is seen Tuesday, March 31, 2020, after suffering significant damage from the March 18 earthquake.

Inconvenient facts?

There are also indications that the commission's ongoing work to identify seismic risks in Utah schools may have also put it in the political crosshairs.

At a hearing at the Capitol, Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, said the committee would “recommend things that can’t be afforded to be done.”

“It puts the state in a position where it has a public record that says, ‘Hey, there are problems,’ and ‘Hey, everybody, we don’t have the funding to address this problem,’” Fillmore added. “That creates some additional responsibility that we don’t need to accept,” he said.

In recent years, it has become “a thorn in the side of the Legislature, which doesn’t like to hear that we should spend money on making schools safer,” said structural engineer and former committee chairman Barry Welliver.

“They force kids to be in school,” Welliver said, “and they don’t risk anything, so to speak. They say, ‘It’s up to you.’”

At the committee meeting on March 28, members wondered aloud whether shifting their focus away from vulnerable public buildings might make lawmakers more willing to extend the committee’s term.

One prominent member said the schools were “probably a big political hot button issue”.

“Frankly, we might have taken a different approach to schools if we had had more detailed guidance about what was happening,” said Robert Grow, the current chairman of the committee.

Gro did not respond to multiple requests for comment before this story was published.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) A COVID-19 closure notice is covered by a warning notice after damage caused by the March 18, 2020, earthquake at the VFW Center in Magna, as seen Tuesday, March 24, 2020.

Welcome to the “Tent City”

During the 2024 legislative session, Sen. David Hinkins, R-Vernon, sponsored a bill to extend the commission's life for another five years.

He said in an interview that he wasn’t entirely sure why the measure had died so suddenly when it reached the Senate. As lawmakers voted down it one by one, Hinkins cheekily offered a brief invitation.

“I have a lot of beautiful farmland that I could turn into a tent city,” Hinkins told his colleagues. “I just want you to know that you are welcome to come down to Emery County and set up camp. If that ever happens — hopefully not — but if it does, you are certainly more than welcome.”

With that, HB47 died after a Senate vote of 18-10, with Hinkins on the losing side. The same session in Congress saw an attempt to abolish hundreds of existing government commissions, which some lawmakers say have done little.

Hinkins said he suspected some lawmakers did not understand the work of the earthquake committee.

Whatever the case, he said, “The people on the Wasatch Front don't care about this. And I certainly don't care about this.”

It actually doesn't cost taxpayers much to set up the committee, as volunteer experts work with a group of state employees from relevant agencies.

Welliver said the legislature's decision surprised him.

“We were wary of the fact that we might lose our position at some point, but we didn't expect that,” Welliver said.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Bricks fall from the VFW center in Magna during the March 18, 2020, earthquake, as seen Tuesday, March 24, 2020.

Future risks

Several committee members said they hoped the committee's work would continue in one way or another.

While Utah's current outlook for the impacts of a major hurricane is grim, state experts say they currently lack up-to-date data on its potential impacts.

The Magna earthquake has shed new light on fault lines in the region, said Divya Chandrasekhar, a committee member and associate professor in the Department of City and Urban Planning at Ohio State University.

Before lawmakers voted to end the commission, its experts were seeking funding to model new damage scenarios to provide “more accurate information that cities can take action on,” Chandrasekhar said. “Right now we don’t know how to move forward, because there’s only one entity that can do something like this, and that’s this commission.”

This has led her and others to worry about keeping the need for earthquake disaster planning in the public eye.

“Probably one of the biggest risks we face in our built environment and our economy is earthquake,” Chandrasekhar said.

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