Scientists research how much warning an earthquake early warning system could give Alaskans

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Earthquakes are impossible to predict, which is why scientists say early detection is important.

The Alaska Earthquake Center has known about an early warning system that is already in place in California, Oregon, Washington and more than a dozen countries for multiple years and implementing it has been on the horizon.

And now, scientist have been researching how much of a warning Alaskans could get.

“The Earthquake Center has been working with the U.S. Geological Survey and other partners. Our hope, our plan, our intention is to bring an earthquake early warning system to Alaska,” said Elisabeth Nadin, Alaska Earthquake Center Geologist and Communications Manager.

Across Alaska, there are a total of 500 seismic stations and depending on the quake’s magnitude and how close someone is to the epicenter, the early warning system would be able to send out an alert a few seconds before that person feels the shaking.

”An early warning system would have the ability to generate a warning that would go across through cell phones, through public information systems, TV, radio, etc., and warn people what level of shaking is coming and how many seconds or so they have to prepare,” Nadin explained.

The Earthquake Center tracks around 40,000 quakes every year, while a majority of them are harmless, the early warning system would give those extra needed seconds to prepare for more powerful quakes.

“Imagine we were linked into all of the infrastructure of Alaska,” Nadin said. “Say the pipeline got the alert and they would be able to enact an automatic shutdown. Or the Port of Alaska got an alert and they were able to immediately implement certain safety procedures to secure personnel and to secure equipment.”

According to a recently published research paper, Alaska comes with some challenges for earthquake early warning systems.

While the paper looks at those, it also said scientists in Alaska found “even the current network geometry is theoretically capable of providing 0–20 [seconds] of warning for intensity 6 for many shallow crustal earthquakes."

According to the research, there’s a way to add another five to 15 seconds of warning, which could also provide “positive warning times for shaking of intensity 8” for some types of quakes.

The organization is facing challenges to getting the system brought to Alaska.

”First, we have to get funding. This is not cheap. We have to kind of optimize our system, build more stations in some places, maybe move some out of other places,” Nadin said.

Nadin told Alaska’s News Source in July the project has been submitted to the government for funding.

”Basically, the USGS is federally supported and it’s kind of in a holding pattern right now,” Nadin said.

See a spelling or grammar error? Report it to web@ktuu.com