Two scientists reported
today developing a new early warning system for earthquakes that could
have given downtown Los Angeles 12 seconds to stop elevators, cut off gas
and get people under desks before heavy shaking began during the 1994
Northridge quake.
That warning period would be enough in their view
to result in a material reduction in loss of life and damage from a big
temblor.
However, fully testing,
funding and building systems to deliver the warnings and make some action
automatic would take at least several years.
The early warning
system is described in an article appearing today in the journal Science.
It is based on just one or two seconds of technical analysis of the first
weak P, or primary, waves of a quake. The P waves serve as a precursor to
severe shaking from stronger S, or secondary, waves, which come seconds
later in any large temblor.
This is the first time that earthquake
scientists have said they were able to learn enough from the initial waves
to tell how big the quake would be. Until now, they have been unable to
divine the eventual power of a temblor because the first waves appeared to
begin in much the same configuration on instrumental recordings for a mild
magnitude 3 as for a huge magnitude 7.
The scientists — Richard M.
Allen of the University of Wisconsin and Hiroo Kanamori of Caltech —
recognize that effective warning is not workable unless small quakes can
be ignored and only large ones counted. Otherwise, there would be too many
false alarms.
The new kind of warning could not be used in the
epicentral areas of a temblor, because there would not be enough time to
convey more than a second or two of warning.
But Allen and
Kanamori's system would convey a warning to places closer to the epicenter
than allowed by the Mexico City early warning system, which uses
seismographic sensors 200 miles away on the Pacific coast to send
advisories only after heavy shaking begins. These may arrive more than a
minute before the shaking finally reaches the Mexican capital.
This
is useful in Mexico City because the metropolis is built on an ancient
lakebed, which is subject to liquefaction — shaking like gelatin from a
powerful quake centered even hundreds of miles distant.
By
contrast, Los Angeles, where there is less liquefaction, would be shaken
noticeably but not for the most part destructively by a major quake
centered 200 miles away in the Imperial Valley. So the sensors would not
be as useful for Los Angeles at a comparable distance.
The early
warning system based on the P waves researched by Allen and Kanamori would
be useful to Los Angeles if the powerful quake were centered on the San
Andreas fault, 40 miles northeast of the city. This would allow 20
seconds' warning downtown.
There were reports in February that a
study funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state
Office of Emergency Services had raised questions about whether an
earthquake early warning of a few seconds would do much good.
The
study sampled opinion and found some officials fearing such warnings could
generate panic, while others suggested people might dither rather than
take immediate protective action.
Allen said in an interview this
week that such concerns seemed fanciful. If the delivery system were
extensive enough, many of the shut-offs of gas and power lines would be
automatic. And if only some people took cover, that would still be better
than none doing so, he suggested.