30 Second Earthquake Warnings

Bill Kendrick writes "A new network of seismic stations may help give as much as a 30 second warning before a major earthquake, giving time to shut down gas lines, stop public transit, etc. Yahoo! News has the story." There are lots of qualifiers in here ("as much as," "some earthquakes") but any warning is probably better than none.

Comments

Tsunami Warning

[ELCarlsson]

Scientists take a few minutes to make sure that there is actually the threat of a tsunami before they issue an alert. They don't want too many false alarms in which case people would start to ignore them. But if there is only 30 seconds warning before an earthquake may happen that doesn't give them any time to verify the occurance. Too many false alarms and people will start to ignore it.

Any warning better than none?

[junk95]

I agree that this discovery is not something to
laugh at. Short-term prediction of earthquakes
is the ultimate goal of seismologists everywhere and the benefits from accurate short-term prediction are huge. Any progress made at this
field is welcomed.

But 30 seconds? And without even 100% accuracy?
It takes more time than this to leave your house. It even takes more time than this to leave the 90th floor of a sky-scraper (although sky scrapers are generally earthquake-proof).
It even takes considerably more time to issue an alert in a large city.

Sorry guys, but 30 seconds would offer nothing more than panic. More people would be killed by trying to evacuate a building with say, 500 employees (within 30 secs) than any given earthquake could dream off (not to mention heart attacks and such). And false alarms would get to everyone's nerves after the first few months.

So, although the discovery is interesting, it is of little to no practical use.

What could you do with 30 seconds?

[Spamalamadingdong]

It might take 30 seconds to leave your house, but it takes a lot less than that to go stand in a doorway. A list off the top of my head:

• Electronic-ignition gas appliances could shut themselves off until the "all clear" sounded.
• Trains, buses and other public transit could come to a halt before the rails or roadway ruptured.
• Traffic signals could go 4-way red for half a minute.
• Electrical systems could prepare for shutdown to prevent fires and other damage from short circuits (kill the circuit breakers at the first heavy shaking), and hospitals and the like could automatically start their emergency generators to prepare for cutover.

None of these things would have large costs from false alarms, but might prevent a lot of death and destruction if a real tremblor hit. Just being able to shut down the electrical grid would prevent transformers from being damaged by shorts and make it much easier to bring the system back up, and killing most open flames from water heaters and furnaces would prevent a lot of fires. This has real potential.