Twenty years after Niskwally, Washington remains unprepared for the next major earthquake

Lawmakers are calling for more federal funding to allow the US Geological Survey to finish building an earthquake warning system. (File, Associated Press)

84% of western Washington will be hit by another Nisqually-type earthquake sometime in the next 50 years. So, how prepared is the region for this to happen? Seismologist Bill Steele says it’s not enough.

Why is a Nisqually type earthquake much more likely than a large earthquake?

Steele, who works with the Pacific Northwest Earthquake Network, cites many of the necessary steps Washington must take in order to be fully prepared for the next earthquake, and he predicts a long way to go to achieve that goal.

To understand why, Steele returns to the Niskwale earthquake of 2001. While the earthquake caused billions of dollars in losses, it did not fully stick in the minds of lawmakers in the following years, which many described as a “threshold event.”

“Things were really about to fail in many different situations, and I spoke to the engineers at night when they came after the survey, where he told them,“ If there was another cycle like that we would have run into a detailed problem. ”Some emergency managers described it as a barrier-stretching earthquake, It hit everyone to some extent, but no one is enough to really make a big difference. ”

Because of that, Washington did not end up bringing about large-scale changes similar to what was seen in California, with funds and resources poured into retrofitted buildings and the installation of ShakeAlert early warning system sensors for decades.

To be smart, there are two-thirds more seismometers already installed in California than are expected to eventually be installed in the Northwest. It depends on “a combination of population density, risk, the fact that California has been building its network for years, and a lot of state investment.”

“They are way ahead of us,” Steele told MyNorthwest. “California and Oregon have invested heavily in a seismograph network – Washington has not.”

In Washington, while state leaders have set aside some money to expand the early warning system, so far, only 65% ​​is still being built without an accurate estimate of when it will be fully installed. The state was originally hoping to be the first to reach its expansion goals, ShakeAlert, and because of this statewide lack of investment, it is likely that the third West Coast state will expire.

These flaws were evident during a recent test of the ShakeAlert system in King, Pierce, and Thurston Counties, where the goal was for people to receive a warning text within five seconds of sending the system. The data is still being analyzed, but according to anecdotal accounts, people reported receiving text messages up to 20 seconds after the system sent it, or in some cases, it did not receive it at all.

“It is clear that improvements are needed,” Steele said. “I think most people have much longer transition times than we want to see – that wouldn’t be useful as a major warning system.”

This is partly because the ShakeAlert system on the back of what’s known as the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system, which Steele refers to, “was not designed for this purpose.” Instead, WEA was originally designed to push warnings for impending fire hazards, weather systems, and Amber alerts, which typically can withstand minute-long transition periods. For earthquakes, every second counts, given the speed at which P-waves – the seismic wave that causes the Earth to vibrate – are moving out of the source rapidly.

Steele’s description: “For every second that passes, the P-wave travels another six kilometers.” “So in five seconds, the P wave will be traveling 30 kilometers in all directions.”

Although more sensors are needed, the state plans to publicly launch the ShakeAlert early warning system in May this year. In the near term, the hope is to continue building sensors and leveling backward systems to reduce delay. In the long run, smartphone apps have proven to be “much faster and appear to work fine”.

Steele predicted that “with the evaluation of the WEA system and work on it, we believe that these mobile applications will intervene to fill the void to deliver messages to the public quickly.”

More work needs to be done at the local level for the upcoming Washington earthquake

So, suppose an early warning system is perfect and everyone gets a text with seconds. Even then, that wouldn’t matter if the entire building collapsed, which, depending on where you are, is a very real possibility in western Washington.

In Seattle alone, there are over 1,100 unreinforced stone buildings (URMs), primarily in historic neighborhoods such as Capitol Hill, Pioneer Square, the International District, Columbia City, and Ballard.

“These are structures that were typically built before 1945 without modern building codes, and are most likely to suffer damage or collapse during an earthquake.”

There is also a worrying number of URM schools in Washington, “and there are no requirements for improving them,” notes Steele.

“Can you imagine sending your 5-year-old to a building that you know is likely to collapse in the next earthquake and not be able to do anything about it?” I assume. “This is unreasonable.”

Video: Remember the Niskwale earthquake 20 years later

But fixing this problem is not as simple as asking to retrofit privately owned buildings, as it can often end up costing like building an entirely new building.

And then, even if you pour millions of dollars into the retrofit, there’s still a chance it will be destroyed or damaged in the next earthquake anyway.

“But it won’t kill people in it or on the sidewalk,” Steele said. “Asking someone to invest millions of dollars in a project that will likely not increase the value of their property much, and their building may continue to collapse after the next earthquake, is a tough incentive.”

This means that the state needs to provide better incentives and investments to motivate building owners to either go ahead with retrofits or, in some cases, rebuild entirely.

Steele explained that “there should be a number of different ways for people to choose to either retrofit or make it easier for them to demolish the building.” “If it’s in a historic area that you really want to preserve, then maybe the public has a role to play in investing in preserving that resource. One way or another, we need a way to make privately owned buildings retrofit, and in fact require it, and spread the pain in a reasonable way.” “.

Meanwhile, “the state has a long way to go” towards achieving this goal, especially after a year in which the country focused largely on mitigating the continuing effects of a global pandemic.

Fortunately, given that it could be decades before the next major earthquake in western Washington arrives, Steele thinks “we might have time.” We just have to not wait too much, “he warns.

Questions, comments or notes? Follow Nick Bowman on Twitter at NickNorthwest to rate or email him at //www.everydayhealth.com/drugs/northwest [email protected]

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