Used in a presentation to promote a new California measure to fund an $80 million early warning system, this graphic shows the progression of earthquake shockwaves along the Andreas Fault, from the Salton Sea to downtown Los Angeles.
The Earthquake Early Warning System has been deemed a success following Monday’s temblor in Riverside County. ‘It got the location and the magnitude right,’ says David Oppenheimer, project chief for the California Integrated Seismic Network’s Northern California division.
Thirty seconds doesn’t sound like much, but it could someday be enough time to save countless lives.
Seismologists said that California’s Earthquake Early Warning System gave them a 30-second heads-up on Monday’s 4.7-magnitude temblor centered in the Riverside County desert.
After the system’s network of sensors detected the quake’s initial P-waves, Caltech scientists in Pasadena were alerted that stronger S-waves would soon follow.
Kate Hutton, a seismologist with Caltech, said the ShakeAlert software on her computer in Pasadena notified her the tremor was coming.
