🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <CARASSO.94Jan24112935@Quaestor.Inference.COM> 
carasso@Inference.COM (dr. carasso) writes:
>
>An Earthquake travels --what-- about 900 MPH?  The speed of sound in
>dirt.  Northdrige the quake center is 15 miles away where a lot of
>damage happened.  If there was a sensor and an alarm you would know 60
>seconds before the earthquake hit.  Even 15 seconds, enoough time to
>wake up and get under a table could save 100's of lives, in a strong
>quake.  

1) The quake was some 10-15 miles beneath Northridge.  So if you are 
   15 miles from Northridge, you are only 6-8 miles further from the 
   quake epicenter.  That cuts your warning time in half. 

2) This was a major quake (6.6 under your house beats an 8.0 a hundred 
   miles away -- compare to the 89 quake south of S.F.) but there were 
   not 100s of deaths.  Further, the vast majority of those deaths 
   were close to the epicenter; few died 15 miles away from it.  

Warnings would clearly help in a situation like the 89 quake, but 
then you get into legal issues related to false alarms (a very 
real concern down here in hurricane country, where evacuation orders 
are sometimes ignored because previous ones were not needed) and missed 
alarms (like the one that killed a dozen people down here in last 
winter's storm).  There is also a fine line where you might think 
you had enough time to get outside, but end up getting killed along 
the way when you would have lived if you had stayed upstairs. 

>Why is this not being done!  Why is there not Earthquake monitors
>throughout California that would warn the surrounding towns!  Why
>aren't all radios, tvs, and air raid sirens, immediately ringing the
>warning!

Do you have earthquake insurance?  

If you think that is too expensive, how much would you pay for a 
warning system given that it will not protect your property from 
damage?  After all, with Prop 13 I might expect a special system 
that works like weather radios (the ones that turn themselves on 
when a warning goes out) based on fee-for-service.  I doubt if 
people will give up police protection for earthquake warning. 

--
J. A. Carr       <jac@scri.fsu.edu>           |  "The New Frontier of which I  
Florida State University  B-186               |  speak is not a set of promises
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute |  -- it is a set of challenges."
Tallahassee, FL  32306-4052                   |   John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)