Earthquake sensor could give early warning in Astoria
Sep. 8—A new monitoring station could give Astorians precious extra time to prepare for an earthquake.
At a meeting Tuesday night, the City Council approved the installation of a seismic sensor on city property off Pipeline Road near a Verizon cell tower.
"The warning will be short ... but it may give you just enough time to duck or do whatever you need to do to protect yourself and your loved ones," City Councilor Tom Brownson said.
Like other cities along the Cascadia Subduction Zone — a fault line that runs from Northern California to Vancouver, British Columbia — Astoria residents live with the ever-present threat of a massive earthquake that could trigger landslides, topple buildings and send tsunami waves shoreward. The last time Cascadia ruptured was more than 300 years ago.
The Astoria sensor will be part of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, a collaborative effort by the University of Oregon, the University of Washington and the U.S. Geological Survey — and with more than 400 stations, now the second largest seismic network in the United States. The sensor will also contribute data to ShakeAlert, an earthquake early warning system people can access on their smartphones.
Depending on where a quake hits, the Astoria sensor may only provide tens of seconds worth of warning time.
But in that fraction of time, hospitals could be warned and functions at power-generating facilities and water utilities could be secured, said Douglas Toomey, a professor in the University of Oregon's Department of Earth Sciences.
"The more we can protect that critical infrastructure, the better we will recover afterwards," Toomey said.
When a fault like Cascadia blows, it doesn't fail everywhere at the same time.
"It unzips like a zipper," Toomey said.
Even just tens of seconds might be enough time for people to duck for cover and hold on and to mentally prepare for evacuation because a tsunami could be coming next.
Beyond the North Coast, a sensor in Astoria is an asset to more distant, inland communities that will also be impacted by a Cascadia Subduction Zone quake, City Councilor Roger Rocka said.
"Us having a sensor is kind of our piece of the puzzle," he said.
The sensor and related equipment comes at no cost to the city. Astoria will only be responsible for paying for power to the station, about the same amount of power used by a small light bulb, according to the University of Oregon.
Response to the danger posed by the Cascadia Subduction Zone has been mixed among North Coast cities over the years. Cannon Beach has invested numerous resources and hours of time into studying possible evacuation routes and running a variety of scenarios. Other communities have only recently begun to discuss moving key public safety infrastructure and structures like school buildings out of danger from tsunami waves or setting up evacuation centers.
In recent years, officials in Astoria have started to push to establish public safety stations elsewhere in the city. The police station and the primary fire station are housed in a single public safety building in the tsunami inundation zone.
