Lori Dengler | Lockdown, budget cuts affect earthquake and tsunami preparedness – Times-Standard

After 43 days, the longest government shutdown in US history has finally ended. The effects were far-reaching, especially on government employees, government-contracting companies, and the many people and organizations that depend on government programs. I will focus on the areas I know best, the earthquake and tsunami programme.

The correct name for the shutdown is “rolling credits”. It means stopping non-essential services; Leave is granted to employees who are not directly related to the protection of human life and property. During the 2025 shutdown, 670,000 workers were furloughed and 730,000 continued to work. Regardless of classification, no federal employee receives pay during the outage.

We have been fortunate that the past 45 days have been relatively quiet seismically. There have been no damaging earthquakes in the United States and no earthquakes large enough to trigger high tsunami warnings. The flow of information on the USGS Latest Earthquakes web page appears to have not changed and service staff have reviewed the locations of earthquakes and the magnitude of events likely to be felt. There was a glitch in the “Did you feel it?” Maps during the first week of lockdown where reports were not shown, but were quickly remedied.

US tsunami warning centers continued to operate as usual. Both are short-staffed due to the loss of probationary staff earlier this year and a hiring freeze. This means long hours and people normally involved in other aspects of the program having to do shifts. Thank you to everyone at the centers for smooth operations that never compromised the ability to issue alerts in a timely manner. Ironically, the approval for new appointments at both centers took place about two weeks after the closure.

The effects were mostly hidden from public awareness. During the closure period, no one was able to install or repair equipment, no data could be analyzed other than cursory reviews of earthquake magnitude/location, no one was able to attend meetings or discuss their work with other scientists, no one was able to work with state and local partners in response planning or risk reduction, and no one was able to participate in outreach activities including media or public discussions. The aftermath for me was a call from KPFA Radio in the San Francisco Bay Area to talk about the San Ramon earthquake sequence because all the USGS experts were tight lipped.

One project that was put on standby was expanding the ShakeAlert early warning notification to the state of Nevada. ShakeAlert is a system that automates the seismic network to send Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) notifications to cell phones and gives critical facilities such as power plants, rapid transit systems, fire stations and hospitals a few seconds to prepare for strong shaking.

It's not easy to “flip a switch” to add the University of Nevada Seismic Network to the ShakeAlert system. All seismic stations must be configured to provide a data stream that ShakeAlert can analyze within seconds. The system must be dense enough to accurately determine the location and size of the forecast. More stations should be added. It's not just Nevada that will benefit. Some of the strongest California earthquakes over the past decade have occurred in eastern California near the Nevada border. ShakeAlert did not work well with the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes because there were no Nevada stations to the east to constrain the location.

Perhaps the biggest blow to internet shutdowns has been intangible morale. The essential/non-essential classification system doesn't make anyone feel comfortable. The USGS chose different names this time – excepted and non-excepted. Exempt employees reported to work each day, while non-exempt employees stayed home. But some non-exempt employees can change their status if they deem it necessary for public safety. For example, if a major earthquake occurs during a lockdown period, a number of people could decide on their own to be part of the response.

Research scientists live for their science. We do this for many reasons but most of all, to better understand how the Earth works and, in risk-related areas, how to create more resilient communities. Progress is made through experimentation, analysis, and much discussion with colleagues in the field. A sudden stop not only affects the business plan, it disrupts communication and thought processes and can derail the entire investigation.

It is strange that communication and public communication are considered “unnecessary”. When it comes to tsunamis, all of us who live on the coast are part of the tsunami warning system. If we do not understand tsunami danger zones or how to respond to natural or official warnings, we may not have any tsunami warning system at all. We have had two tsunami warnings in the past year. In both the December 5 North Coast earthquake and the July 29 earthquake in Kamchatka, the technical parts of the system that detected and analyzed the earthquakes worked well. The failures were in communication, threat perception, and human response, which are areas that can only be improved through communication.

The shutdown is over, and systems and most programs will gradually return to how they were before they started. But maybe not all. A few weeks ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced the cancellation of a contract with the Alaska Earthquake Center to operate nine seismic stations that feed data directly to two tsunami warning centers in the United States. These are stations configured to detect large earthquakes and provide quality data to quickly determine the size and characteristics of a fault.

The decision was made at NOAA's headquarters in Silver Springs, Maryland, in response to reductions in NOAA's overall budget. $300,000 a year for the University of Alaska, Fairbanks is just a pittance in savings, but this is an example of a foolish sterling pound in the bigger picture of tsunami safety, not just for Alaska, but the West Coast and Hawaii as well. The four stations in the Aleutian region are arguably the busiest on the seismic side of tsunami warning and the source area for some of the largest tsunami-induced earthquakes.

Ten earthquakes of magnitude 7 or greater have occurred in this region in the past 25 years, and nine of them caused tsunamis. The tsunami waves were modest, with the largest only about two feet high, but the first waves reached Alaska's towns and villages in less than an hour, and we are only four to five hours away. Much larger earthquakes have occurred in the distant geological past. The area that gives many California tsunami experts pause is that its epicenter is in the eastern Aleutians, extending from Kodiak to the Andrianof Islands. If this entire section were to rupture, it could produce a M9.5 earthquake, which would rival the 1960 Chilean earthquake as the largest on the planet. But even a 9.0 or 9.2 M in this region could be more devastating to California than M9.2 in 1964 because of sea level rise and its direction relative to our coast.

Major Alaska earthquakes are short-term events from a Hawaii or West Coast perspective. It takes at least three hours to coordinate official evacuations. Tsunami centers need accurate information very quickly to determine the size of the tsunami that may come our way. Issuing an insignificant tsunami warning results in excessive evacuation, potential casualties, economic costs, and loss of credibility of the tsunami warning. Missing a fatal event is even worse.

My first question when I learned about the cancellation was, Are there no other seismic stations that can cover the area where the University of Alaska stations are located? Search for USGS stations in the Aleutian region and hundreds of points will appear. Why can't they be used to provide the same data feeds? These stations are dedicated to monitoring volcanoes and are very sensitive to small signals that indicate the reawakening of the volcanic center. They are not designed to record major earthquakes and give accurate estimates at scale 7 or larger.

Seismology is expensive in Alaska. Ideal station locations are remote, access is limited, the weather is harsh, and grizzly bears have been known to manipulate inadequately protected equipment. Nowadays, seismometers are still our first line of defense in the tsunami warning system. There have been loud boos from Pacific nations and territories as a result of the cancellation, and I note that NOAA headquarters changed their mind that the $300,000 was really worth keeping in the budget.

Lori Dengler is professor emeritus of geology at Cal Poly Humboldt and an expert in tsunami and earthquake hazards. Questions or comments about this column, or want a free copy of the “Living on Shaky Ground” preparedness magazine? Leave a message at 707-826-6019 or email [email protected].

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