Alaskans are a small step closer to having a system that can send alerts to their phones seconds before an earthquake hits. Those alerts would come from a U. S. Geological Survey early warning system called ShakeAlert — which some states and countries have had for years.
In late February, Congress allocated $34.9 million to USGS to expand ShakeAlert. $2 million of that will go toward bringing it to Alaska.
State Seismologist Michael West, who directs the Alaska Earthquake Center, has been working for over a decade to bring the system up north. He said they're still several years and many millions of dollars away from making earthquake early warning a reality here, but the investment from Congress is heartening.
"There's a lot to figure out, and the pace of rollout of early warning will certainly depend on support and engagement and all of those things," West said. "But I feel like we're at a turning point. We're starting to make this real."
ShakeAlert works because earthquakes release waves of energy that travel at different speeds. The P-wave, which moves fast but usually is too weak for people to feel, gets farther and farther ahead of the slower, potentially damaging S-wave as they travel through the earth.
If Alaska had an earthquake early warning system, it would rely on sensors close to the earthquake to pick up those P-waves and relay that information to the Alaska Earthquake Center in Fairbanks. The system would then send out an alert with an estimate of how strong the shaking could be.
Depending on where the earthquake happened, those electronic alerts can reach people before strong shaking does. Advocates for early warning systems say that makes people safer by allowing, for example, teachers to tell students to take shelter under their desks.
West said Alaska's federal delegation — particularly Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee — helped secure the seed money for the project. Murkowski said in an emailed statement that expanding the program into Alaska is a priority and called it "highly successful" on the West Coast.
"As the most seismically active state in the union, I'm focused on investing in tools to keep Alaskans safe from earthquakes," her statement said.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, which houses the Alaska Earthquake Center, estimates a $66 million price tag for the first phase of the project, plus $12 million a year in operating costs. But the $2 million from Congress will give the Earthquake Center more resources to lay the groundwork.
West said he envisions a rollout where people in Southcentral, Kodiak, Fairbanks, and the Prince William Sound region would be the first to get ShakeAlerts.
"These are the regions of the state that have the highest seismic hazard," West said. "We will begin this effort there for two reasons: one, we have a combination of high risk and population. And also, we've got some of the best infrastructure to start with. That area already has reasonably solid basic earthquake monitoring."
West said state funding for the program will be critical in years to come, though the program isn't under consideration in the state budget this year.
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