A U.S. House committee run by retiring Washington Congressman Doc Hastings wants to know if there's a reliable way to warn of impending earthquakes. A Natural Resources Committee oversight hearing next week is titled - "Whole Lotta Shaking: An Examination of America's Earthquake Early Warning System Development and Implementation."
One key witness may be Washington State seismologist John Vidale, who runs the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network.
He and scientists from Cal Tech and UC Berkeley have spent years putting together an earthquake early warning system for the quake-prone west coast. Pieces of the system are being installed in seismically active areas of Southern California.
The way Vidale put it - It's about noticing earthquakes fast and telling people the shaking is on the way."
The warning system would depend on measurement of initial waves from a seismic shock that travel faster than the main waves that cause the damage.
A similar system in Mexico last month gave Mexico City residents about 60 seconds notice before the area was rocked by a seven-point-two magnitude quake. That's not much time, but it gives people time to dive under desks, to automatically open fire station doors, to barricade bridges or stop trains.
Vidale estimates that a west coast warning system would cost under 40-million dollars to build and about 16-million dollars a year to run.
He and other seismologists for years have been skeptical of forecasting earthquakes based on minor tremors in the earth, because they're frequent and usually benign. For example, his seismometers have recorded 15 quakes around Mount Rainier just in the past 30 days and another 13 at Mount Saint Helens.