San Simeon HGMP funds

Both the San Simeon and Parkfield earthquakes highlighted the spareness of instrumentation in central California, outside of the Bay Area. In both cases, the initial ShakeMaps were not well constrained, due to the lack of digitial instrumentation with real-time communications. One major difference between these two events is that the Parkfield area was very densely instrumented, particularly with accelerometers deployed by the California Geological Survey. However, since these instruments were primarily analog, the data were not available for several days after the event.

As a result of the San Simeon earthquake, FEMA made funds available to OES. The BSL, Caltech, and CGS submitted a joint application for Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funds, which was funded in Spring of 2005. The funds received by BSL will be expended to add one broadband station in the vicinity of the San Simeon event and to relocate the data acquisition and processing systems from McCone Hall to 2195 Hearst (described in Chapter 9).