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Shake-Alert System Pilot Program In Place In Eugene

EWEB

Oregon Governor Kate Brown has approved $670-thousand for a Eugene utility to purchase sensors for an earthquake early warning system called Shake-Alert.

Eugene Water and Electric Board installed one sensor at Leaburg dam and will put in the other this spring. Doug Toomey is professor of geophysics at the University of Oregon. He’s helping beta-test the shake-alert system. He says the west coast is about 40 percent of the way to a fully functional network of sensors which could give up to 2 minutes warning of a major earthquake.  
Toomey: “The important thing in an earthquake is to duck, cover and hold so if you’re given a little bit of warning you can cut down on those injuries. So, to have it be a fully functional system, we simply need to raise the money other countries have done, build out the system so there’s enough sensors and then deliver the messages to the public.”
Mexico and Japan have earthquake early warning systems in place. Toomey says it would take $30 million to build the Shake-alert system along the west coast and $16 million annually to maintain it.
 

Rachael McDonald is KLCC’s host for All Things Considered on weekday afternoons. She also is the editor of the KLCC Extra, the daily digital newspaper. Rachael has a BA in English from the University of Oregon. She started out in public radio as a newsroom volunteer at KLCC in 2000.
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