The Next Disaster: Earthquakes

There’s no way to predict an earthquake, but there is a way to give people a little bit of warning to get to a safe place.

FOX News Radio’s Jessica Rosenthal reports from Los Angeles, California in our series “The Next Disaster”:

Countries like Japan already have them, and California State Senator Alex Padilla says it’s time we have an early warning system. He says we already have a series of sensors in the ground around the state and scientists at Caltech monitor them.

(Padilla) “By deploying additional sensors and making sure that they have redundant ability to communication to a central computer if you will, that’s the first step.”

Padilla says other things still need to get worked out, like how we would get the information out to the public. USGS geophysicist Robert Graves explains how the science works.

(Graves) “The earthquake waves travel away from the rupture at the speed of sound and we can basically transmit the information at the speed of light.”

Giving us anywhere from a few seconds to nearly a minute of warning.

(Padilla) “While it may not seem like a lot of time, you know, if you talk to a parent of a young child, it’s enough time to grab your loved ones and get into a safer location.”

Padilla says he’s introduced a bill. The thing now is securing the $80 million in funding to build out the system.

In LA, Jessica Rosenthal, FOX News Radio.

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