Earthquake early warning system is coming to Alaska

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – A system that gives people advance warning of earthquakes in Washington, Oregon and California is one step closer to being accessible to Alaskans.

At least $2 million of the $34.9 million allocated by Congress to the USGS will be used to further develop ShakeAlert, America’s earthquake early warning system, to add Alaska to the system. The Alaska Earthquake Center will work with the USGS on implementation.

Many earthquake-prone parts of the world, including parts of the United States, have implemented early warning systems, said Michael West, a seismologist at the Alaska Earthquake Center.

“ShakeAlert is the primary app in the United States for achieving earthquake early warning goals,” West said. “The US West Coast, California, Oregon and Washington have done this successfully for many years and are working today, so it seems too late for Alaska to join the ranks of these places and gain early warning capabilities.”

Once in place, the amount of time a ShakeAlert early warning system can warn people of an earthquake before shaking begins can range from a few seconds to more than a minute. One thing that makes it difficult to predict how much warning people will receive is that Alaska has many different types of earthquakes, West said.

“We have earthquakes that occur on faults within Alaska, on the mainland, in the Anchorage area, throughout the interior, in the Southeast,” he said. “We have earthquakes that happen 50, 100, 200 kilometers below the surface…and the third type we have is these giant, 1964-style, magnitude 8 or 9 earthquakes that happen off the coast. These are all very different early warning scenarios.”

“The closest analogy to Alaska is Japan. Japan has had a very active warning system for many years now, and that system was in place during the 9.0 magnitude earthquake about 15 years ago, people remember… The people who were in Tokyo for this event had a strong warning for 60 to 90 seconds before the quake hit.”

With the extra time to prepare before shaking, people at home can get down, cover and stabilize, as is often recommended, he said. However, people who work can also use the extra time to protect themselves and others around them as well.

“I think some of the biggest opportunities are things we don’t think about a lot…simple things like turning all the stoplights red, closing the ramps on the two bridges, slowing down the trains, moving people out of areas that are prone to landslides or avalanches,” West said. “In places like hospitals, this could be an opportunity to transition to power generation before they go out.

“In our military sector, there are all kinds of activities that can happen, and as simple as pausing aircraft take-offs and landings. Just pausing for a minute or two, saying, ‘Why don’t you do one more turn before landing?’ to a whole host of more sensitive types of actions you can take.”

The implementation plan developed by the state and the USGS gives a conservative estimate that full implementation of the system could take about six years, West said. However, in the middle of this period, early warning alerts may be active in certain areas, most likely in the south-central part of the country.

“There is an instrumentation component, which is making sure that we measure and monitor the Earth and all the places where the earthquakes come from,” he said. “Obviously there’s a very important IT component, which is the software and data transfer and message delivery and all that stuff, and then there’s an educational component, because we as Alaskans need to understand how to use this information. All of that will take time.”

“We’re just getting started. This work has been many years in the making. It will take many years to implement, but it feels like it’s time to join the ranks of other places. People who live in certain parts of the West Coast, this is really just something they expect in life. They’ve been used for years to know about vibration before it starts. It’s a little new concept for us.”

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