Trump budget cuts funding for earthquake early warning system. Again.
In what looks to be yet another attempt to poke a finger in California’s eye, the Trump administration’s proposed budget eliminates funding for the state’s still-nascent earthquake early warning system. The administration tried to end the program last year, but failed after Congress voted in favor of keeping it.
The earthquake early warning system, called Shake Alert, is being developed through the U.S. Geological Service, which sits within the U.S. Department of Interior. That department said in its budget proposal that it was ending the program to address other priorities.
The administration’s proposed budget would eliminate $13 million from the earthquake hazards program, including $10.2 million for the earthquake early warning program. The proposed budget includes getting rid of 15 related staff positions.
California and other West Coast lawmakers aren’t happy about the Trump administration’s attempts to try cutting the early warning system yet again. Democrats representing western states sent a letter to White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney asking that funding for an earthquake early-warning system be reinstated in the fiscal 2018 budget. The group includes Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.) and Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), along with 31 other lawmakers.
The earthquake early warning system has been in development since 2008 with the goal of more rapidly detecting earthquakes and creating a network that would warn affected populations as quickly as possible.
That warning system is being designed to work with the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN) and leverage monitoring systems established by the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS).
About half of the nearly 1,700 earthquake-monitoring stations — about 859 total – that California needs to detect quakes and alert the public have been installed to date. All of those stations need to be in place to provide the type of timely warnings that would make the system viable.
California is noted for earthquake activity and multiple fault lines, including the infamous San Andreas fault. The last significant earthquake to hit a populated area in California occurred in 2014. The 6.0 shaker was centered in Napa Valley, but was felt throughout the Bay Area. That quake damaged multiple structures, injured about 100 people, and left 77,000 people without power.
Meanwhile, early warning systems are already in place in earthquake-prone countries like Mexico, Japan, China, Italy, Romania, Taipei, and Turkey. Mexico’s system has been put to use in a recent spate of back-to-back earthquakes ranging from 4.2 to 7.2 that have struck the country since the latter part of last week.
As for why other countries already have a system and California does not, here’s what USGS geophycisist Doug Given had to say: “The other systems in the world were built after large, damaging and often deadly earthquakes. And those earthquakes produced the political will to invest in and build an early-warning system.”
While Congress showed it was willing to go to bat for the system with the administration’s last budget, it remains to be seen if they have the will do so this time around — before the next major disaster strikes.
By: Aaron Heinrich
Source: 50 States of Blue