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Aug 24, 2007

Japan
planning nationwide earthquake warning system

TOKYO
- IT'S still beyond the reach of science to predict exactly when an
earthquake will strike, but Japan will soon get the next-best thing
- televised warnings that come before the shaking starts.

In an ambitious attempt at protecting large populations from
seismic disaster, Japan's Meteorological Agency and national
broadcaster are teaming up to alert the public of earthquakes as
much as 30secs before they hit, or at least before they can bring
their full force down on populated areas.

The system - the first of its kind in the world - cannot actually
predict quakes, but officials say it can give people enough time to
get away from windows that could shatter, or turn off ovens and
prevent fires from razing homes.

And in one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world,
every second counts.

'If we can give people enough time to take even a few steps to
protect themselves before the shaking starts, it could help reduce
injuries and damage,' said agency spokesman Makoto Saito.

The warnings, to begin in Oct, will be based on data provided by
the Meteorological Agency, which maintains an intricate network of
sensors deep underground that estimate the intensity of a quake as
soon as the ground ruptures.

Alarms can go out
before the shaking starts because there is a lag between the time it
takes for different seismic waves to travel to the surface.

Japan, which sits atop four tectonic plates, has been hit by 83
temblors strong enough to cause injury since March 1996, including
one last month that killed 11 people and caused a fire and small
radiation leak at the world's largest nuclear power plant.

Detects primary waves
The warning system works by
detecting primary waves, which spread from the epicentre of a quake
and travel faster than the destructive shear waves. When waves of a
certain intensity are detected, the alarms are set off. NHK will
relay them almost instantaneously to its television and radio
audience.

The agency started issuing warnings last Aug to more than 500
organisations such as power companies and train operators.

The system is not perfect.

Lightning or other interference can cause it to transmit false
alarms, for example, and early warning would not work for areas
directly above the ruptured fault as the two waves it detects are
nearly simultaneous. Residents who are not watching television or
listening to the radio when an alert goes out will not hear it.

Still, the agency says the system helped it issue a tsunami alert
for a magnitude 6.9 earthquake in northern Japan this March two
minutes faster than its old early warning system would have. The
agency was also able to put out a warning ahead of last month's
magnitude 6.8 quake.

How the larger public will react has been a concern.

'Chaos and injuries could result, for example, if an urgent
earthquake warning is sent to a facility with large numbers of
customers and a crush forms at the exits as people rush to get out,'
an agency study group wrote in a report last year.

The warnings, it was decided, must come with explanations of what
viewers can do - stop cars and elevators, get away from things that
can fall and, most of all, protect their heads.

'We realised the warnings won't work if confusion is the result,'
said the agency's Saito. 'The public needs to be educated about how
and how not to react.'

Since early last month, NHK has begun preparing Japan for the
alerts, carrying promotional spots accompanied by skits that show
how to respond.

Officials say the system is unprecedented in scale, and may serve
as a model for others.

'A lot of the injuries in an earthquake come from secondary
damage, like fires started from open gas lines,' said Barry
Drummond, who oversees seismic monitoring for Canberra's Geoscience
Australia. 'If you've got enough time to shut the gas valve, you're
that much farther ahead.'

Small-scale warning systems exist in parts of Mexico, Taiwan and
Turkey. In the US, commercially available are battery-powered
seismic gadgets that can warn a limited region, while a group of
seismologists at the University of California, Berkeley, is working
on a system inspired in part by the one in Japan.

'The implementation in Japan is most important to us as a test of
the concept,' said Richard Allen, who heads the group. 'We are
particularly interested to see how the public reacts to the
information and (who) starts to make use of the information and
how.' -- AP

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