Bringing Earthquake Early Warning to Washington
WHEN
Thursday, May 5, 2022
4:30-5:30 p.m. PT
LOCATION
Online
Zoom
PRICE
Free
Check out this video to watch the Bringing Earthquake Early Warning to Washington.
Background, challenges, and were we successful?
Environmental Speaker Series
Brought to you by:
WWU College of the Environment
in partnership with the WWU Alumni Association
Even though felt ones do not happen frequently, earthquakes have shaped geography and life in the Pacific Northwest. Our mountains and valleys have been shaped by tectonic forces going back to well before humans arrived here. Earthquakes are still occasionally felt here in the Bellingham area. Since 2018, the ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system has been providing alerts about potentially damaging shaking to partners in California, Oregon, and Washington. On May 4th, 2021, public alerting finally went live in Washington state. Now basically every cell phone in the state (residents and visitors) can receive a Wireless Emergency Alert message to notify them that an earthquake has happened and they might feel strong shaking from it. This enables folks to stop whatever they are doing and take protective actions to protect themselves and others. Getting to this point has been a long process with many false alerts and funding shortfalls. We will discuss the path taken to earthquake early warning and look at the results from recent activity on the West Coast. Has ShakeAlert been successful?
More information about the speaker series is available here, and past Environmental Speaker Series recordings are available here.
We are excited that we will be live-streaming from a WWU classroom for the webinar for our off-campus audience. Due to the pandemic, only WWU students will be in-person for the presentation but we look forward to welcoming you all to class virtually.
Dr. Mouse Reusch
Speaker
Dr. Mouse Reusch serves as the Manager of Projects and Process Management at the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network on the University of Washington Seattle Campus. She has been at the PNSN for the last 5+ years, increasing the number of new seismic stations by over 250 sites to help build out the network in anticipation of the expansion of earthquake early warning in Oregon and Washington.
Prior to the PNSN, the previous 6 years were spent based out of New Mexico working for a seismometer lending library and installing seismic stations in North and South America, Africa, and Antarctica. She herds cats at home as well as in the UW office and enjoys traveling around the Pacific Northwest.
Questions and Accommodations
Stefan Freelan is the coordinator of the Environmental Speaker Series. Send email to stefan@wwu.edu or call (360) 650-2949 if you have any questions or comments.
There will be auto-captions available for this event.