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Taiwan to boost quake warning system with undersea facility
Taipei (AFP) Nov 15, 2009 Taiwan plans to build its first undersea seismic station, designed to improve the island's early warning system and save valuable seconds when earthquakes strike, officials said Sunday. The station, which is due to come into service in 2011, would help reduce the margin of error when monitoring undersea quakes and improve on the island's existing system of land-based seismic stations. The new facility would provide a roughly 10 second warning ahead of earthquakes and a 10 minute alert ahead of the impact of a tsunami, according to Kuo Kai-wen, the head of Taiwan's Seismology Centre. "The few seconds extra will give people precious time to seek shelter and flee coastal areas in the case of killer quakes," he told AFP. NEC of Japan won the 423 million Taiwan dollar (13 million US) contract to build the station, which will be situated some 45 kilometres off the northeastern coast, an area frequently hit by earthquakes, he said. Taiwan's three-phase earthquake early warning system has slashed the time of quake detection from up to three minutes in 1992 to around 35 seconds today. The island, which lies near the junction of two tectonic plates, is regularly shaken by earthquakes. A 7.6-magnitude quake killed about 2,400 people in September 1999. Share This Article With Planet Earth
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Deep Creep Means Milder, More Frequent Earthquakes Along San Jacinto FaultMiama FL (SPX) Nov 10, 2009 With an average of four mini-earthquakes per day, Southern California's San Jacinto fault constantly adjusts to make it a less likely candidate for a major earthquake than its quiet neighbor to the east, the Southern San Andreas fault, according to an article in the journal Nature Geoscience. "Those minor to moderate events along the San Jacinto fault relieve some of the stress built by ... read more |
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