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HEARING ON THE TURKEY, TAIWAN, AND MEXICO EARTHQUAKES: LESSONS LEARNED
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1999
House of Representatives,
Committee on Science,
Subcommittee on Basic Research,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m., in room 2318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Nick Smith (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
Chairman SMITH. The Science Subcommittee on Basic Research will come to order.
I want to welcome everybody to today's hearing. I understand we have guests from both Japan and Taiwan. Welcome. Certainly what we do in terms of learning from post-earthquake research and investigation and assistance is something that can be utilized not only in this country, but everywhere in the world.
In February, our subcommittee held a hearing on the annual budget request of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHERP). Today's hearing focuses on a specific aspect of NEHERP; namely, what can we learn and what have we learned by studying recent earthquakes, and how do we get the appropriate information to users?
As many of you know, this past Sunday marked the ten-year anniversary of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake near San Francisco. Thought it was centered 50 miles outside of the city, the quake still killed 69 people and caused over $6 billion in damages. Had the quake been centered closer to the city's urban core, the results would have been much worse. In 1994, a smaller quake struck Northridge in the City of Los Angeles. That quake killed 57 people and caused over $40 billion in damages. In 1995, the city of Kobe, Japan, suffered a major earthquake that caused nearly 6,000 deaths and over $100 billion in damages. The likelihood of a similar quake in an urban center like Los Angeles or San Francisco would be very significant.
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There have been three major earthquakes worldwide within the last three months. In Izmit, Turkey, on August 19, there was an earthquake registering 7.4 on the Richter Scale. The death toll in that quake has been estimated at 17,000 people with an estimated loss of $30 billion. On September 20, Taiwan suffered its worst earthquake in 30 years with a magnitude of 7.6 on the Richter. It left over 2,000 people dead, over 100,000 homeless, and caused over $1 billion in damage. And on September 30 an earthquake registering 7.5 on the Richter Scale hit Mexico, approximately 300 miles southeast of Mexico City. More than 30 people were killed and between $10 and $25 million worth of property was destroyed. That was a very rural area in Mexico.
Could something similar happen in the United States? According to the U.S. Geological Survey, 39 States are exposed to a significant risk from earthquakes, and about 75 million people live in urban areas with at least a moderate risk of earthquakes.
Post-earthquake analysis provides a wealth of knowledge relevant to earthquake mitigation and emergency response. In the ten years since Loma Prieta quake, we have learned a great deal through post-earthquake research. Our panelists will testify today about their own recent experiences in Turkey, Taiwan, and Mexico, and about the lessons we have learned from these events. We will also hear from the U.S. Geological Survey on the role the National Center for Earthquake Prediction plays in monitoring earthquakes worldwide.
Just last week, the USGS released a report warning that there is a 70 percent chance of a magnitude 7.0 or greater quake in the San Francisco area sometime within the next 30 years. As if on cue, this announcement was followed up over the weekend by a magnitude 7.0 tremor in California. Thankfully, the earthquake was centered in a sparsely populated area in the Mohave Desert, and damage was minimal.
An earthquake of similar strength occurring in a heavily populated area in the U.S. would result in catastrophe, both in life and property. It is my hope that the lessons we learn studying earthquakes abroad will help us be more prepared when it happens here. And certainly the information that we are able to accumulate needs to be dispersed not only in this country, but to all countries that are threatened with quakes.
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So the questions are, what have we learned, and how will that information be used?
I would like to thank the panelists today for taking their time and sharing their expertise with our subcommittee.
Chairman SMITH. Lynn, would you like to make an opening statement, or would you like to make that available to the ranking member when she comes in?
Ms. RIVERS. I will pass.
Chairman SMITH. With that then, let me introduce the panelists today. Our first panelist is Director of the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center, Mr. Waverly Person. The second panelist is Thomas O'Rourke, professor of engineering at Cornell University. Professor O'Rourke is testifying today on behalf of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. The third panelist is president of the Seismological Society of America, a professor at the University of Arizona, Professor Terry Wallace. And our final panelist is Michael Tamillow, Battalion Chief of Fairfax County Virginia Fire and Rescue Service and is a member of the county's internationally known Urban Search and Rescue Task Force. Mr. Tamillow recently participated in post-earthquake rescue activities in both Taiwan and Turkey.
Ms. Johnson, we just introduced the panelists. But I would now like to turn it over to you for your opening statement.
Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for being late. Let me welcome our guests, our witnesses as well.
Today we are looking at the post-earthquake data gathering and analyzing capabilities of the programs under the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. This hearing is not only prudent but timely. It provides us with the means to assess our progress in seismic research and development. The NEHERP program has been expanded this year to include the advanced National Seismic Research and Monitoring System and the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation. These two programs reflect both the priorities set forth by the Federal agencies and the research communities, and the attention that the committee is paying to these deficiencies that exist in our present seismic infrastructure.
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The other reason this hearing is timely and the reason we have chosen these particular witnesses is that recently there have been a number of massive earthquakes throughout the globe. So far in 1999, there have been 11 earthquakes equally or exceeding 7.0 magnitude. These earthquakes have caused damage in the billions and resulted in the loss of close to 20,000 lives.
It is difficult to look at the worldwide effects of earthquakes and the obvious need for improved monitoring, mitigation, and preparedness measures without mentioning our late committee chairman, Mr. George Brown, Jr. He crusaded for earthquake preparedness and mitigation as early as the 1960s and his efforts continued until his passing in July of this year. Mr. Brown believed foremost in seismic safety standards, coordination with the national, state, and local governments, dissemination of information, education, and awareness. He acknowledged the accomplishments made over the years in these areas, but always held out a goal that went further. It went beyond the adoption of effective seismic safety standards to the implementation of said standards, which, as evidenced by the devastation in Taiwan and Turkey, are not one and the same.
Mr. Brown's expectations also went beyond the ad hoc dissemination of information to the practices and programs that would promote effective dissemination of information, programs such as the proposed Global Disaster Information Network. The GDIN was designed to be a virtual network that would leverage existing programs by providing a site for cooperative exchange of global information through an effective search of the web sites of disaster information providers. This goal of building interagency, intergovernment coordination is essential if we hope to make the best use of our limited resources in the crucial hours directly following a disaster.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, let me say that I think Mr. Brown would be excited by the global focus of this hearing today. He was convinced of the merits of working together to accomplish the ultimate goal of a disaster-proof infrastructure. I think that the more we hear about the similarities in fault structure, building codes, and economic impact, the more we will agree that it is in the interest of all parties to cooperate in this effort. I also think that he would use this opportunity to not only ask the lessons learned, but to ask our witnesses what they think needs to be done to see that these lessons are put into action.
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I look forward to our witnesses' opinions on these issues as well as others that arise from the testimony and from our questions. I thank you very much for your leadership, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Representative Johnson.
Gentlemen, it is the policy of the Science Committee that all witnesses are sworn in. So if you would rise and raise your right hand. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
[Witnesses respond in the affirmative.]
Chairman SMITH. Let the record show that all the witnesses answered in the affirmative.
Mr. Person, we will start with you. Without objection, your full written testimony that has been submitted will be included in the record. And if you would try to hold your comments to five minutes, it would help us with question and answer time later on.
Mr. Person.
TESTIMONY OF WAVERLY PERSON, GEOPHYSICIST, UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, NATIONAL EARTHQUAKE INFORMATION CENTER, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, DENVER, CO
Mr. PERSON. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to present, on behalf of the U.S. Geological Survey, testimony on the role of the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) during the recent large earthquakes.
The NEIC, in Golden, Colorado, rapidly and accurately determines the location and magnitudes of significant earthquakes throughout the world. The NEIC immediately and electronically sends this information to key civil defense and public safety agencies, and for damaging earthquakes abroad, to staff of the American embassies and consulates in affected countries.
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An example of how the NEIC works, I have provided a chronology of events which occurred following the magnitude 7.6, September 20 Taiwan earthquake. The origin of the Taiwan earthquake was 13:47 Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). Nine minutes after the origin of the event, the first energy arrived at the westernmost U.S. National Seismic Network station in Shemya, Alaska. By 14:03 EDT, 15 minutes after the origin of the event, NEIC had enough to locate the event and issue automatic, computer-generated e-mail, fax, and pager announcements of the event.
By 14:35 EDT the NEIC was able to issue a reviewed report of magnitude 7.6 based on surface wave amplitudes. An announcement based on the reviewed solution was sent to critical offices and disaster relief agencies. During the next hours and days, the NEIC gave numerous media interviews, including reports on a vigorous aftershock sequence.
The steps described above in characterizing an earthquake and issuing an earthquake announcement are essentially identical for locating and characterizing domestic earthquakes. In a domestic earthquake, however, the U.S. National Seismic Network and NEIC take on a more pivotal role in earthquake alert, response, assessment, and recovery efforts. In the same way, the local networks in Turkey and Taiwan served as the central nervous system during each of their respective events, providing information critical to earthquake response efforts. It is thus instructive to consider the performance of the Turkey and Taiwan local networks, with an eye toward learning from this experience and better preparing for the inevitable events in the U.S.
In responding to a devastating earthquake, time is of the essence. Emergency managers require immediate information on the location and magnitude of the epicenter and the severity and geographic distribution of strong ground shaking in order to determine the levels of mobilization required, and to some extent the types of resources needed to respond effectively. Our Turkish colleagues report that it took two days to assess the full extent of damage from the magnitude 7.4 earthquake in Turkey and direct teams of relief workers to the hardest hit areas. Part of the problem the Turkish government had in dealing with this crisis was the Turkey seismic network was saturated by the large event and did not perform effectively. As a result, the severity and extent of the damage and human loss were underestimated, and emergency response officials were not provided with adequate and timely information with which to work.
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In contrast, in Taiwan relief efforts moved much more quickly, aided significantly by the modern seismographic alert system in place in Taiwan. Taiwan maintains a network consisting of approximately 1,000 digital seismic recording instruments—the highest concentration of modern digital accelerographs in the world. For illustration purposes, a comparison of the station spacing in Taiwan versus California is portrayed in the following graphic.
The dense array of accelerographs allowed the Taiwan Seismic Center to rapidly compute the parameters of the Taiwan earthquake and associated aftershocks. The location, depth, and magnitude were computed in 102 seconds. In addition, the Taiwan alert system automatically created a shaking intensity map for the island in the first 102 seconds. The latter provided an estimate of shaking severity and the level of damage likely associated with such shaking. The map enabled emergency managers to promptly locate the hardest hit areas and send appropriate help.
Because damage from earthquakes is not evenly distributed about the epicenter but is instead greatly affected by local geologic conditions, an accurate shaking intensity map is an invaluable tool for the emergency managers. But to resolve this non-uniform pattern of ground shaking in an urbanized area requires dense instrumentation, and in the U.S. we fall well short of the Taiwan model. Although southern California, by virtue of the FEMA-sponsored TriNet, can now produce a shake map for an earthquake in its region almost as fast as Taiwan, the San Francisco Bay area, Seattle, Portland, New Madrid, Salt Lake City, and other cities in earthquake prone areas of the United States are all vulnerable.
In February of 1999, the USGS responded to a request by this subcommittee and submitted a report entitled: ''An Assessment of Seismic Monitoring in the United States: Requirement for an Advanced National Seismic System.'' Delineated in this report are the needs and associated costs of upgrading the U.S. seismic network and NEIC to achieve an effective national seismic monitoring strategy. The report indicates that these modernization steps are necessary if the U.S. hopes to follow Taiwan's lead and effectively plan for mitigating the effects of earthquakes and providing rapid relief to earthquakes.
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Chairman SMITH. Mr. Person, I apologize for interrupting you, but I am going to ask you to give us a concluding statement.
Mr. PERSON. In conclusion, the technology is currently available to significantly improve the delivery of earthquake disaster information, and Taiwan has served as a trend-setter in this regard. For the USGS, these advances hinge upon upgrading our current 1960–1970 vintage network and transforming it into a digital network with much denser clustering of instruments in urban centers where damage is likely to be greatest and where immediate response is critical.
Chairman SMITH. Thank you very much.
Mr. O'Rourke.
TESTIMONY OF THOMAS D. O'ROURKE, THOMAS R. BRIGGS PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING, SCHOOL OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, NY, ON BEHALF OF THE EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Mr. O'ROURKE. The two most——
Chairman SMITH. Mr. O'Rourke, again we apologize. The main screen, I guess you, the panel, and the audience can see on these two screens and the monitor in front of you. We have lost, in this high technological age, having the most technological committee room in the United States Congress, we have burned out a light bulb for our projection on our larger screen.
Mr. O'Rourke, please proceed.
Mr. O'ROURKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The two most pervasive images and lessons from both the Turkey and Taiwan earthquakes are: (1) tens of thousands of failures of non-ductile concrete buildings which were high occupancy and which many people lived and died in, and (2) surface faulting with critical facilities ruptured and nonserviceable because they were intersected by severe fault movements.
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Non-ductile concrete buildings are those built of concrete which is structurally reinforced with steel, but where the quantity of steel is too low to strengthen the building against the swaying movement generated during an earthquake. As a consequence, these buildings are prone to catastrophic rupture and collapse. Non-ductile concrete structures are a serious problem not only in Turkey and Taiwan, but also in the U.S.
To give you a sense for what happens with these buildings, here is a picture of Edipizari in Turkey. About 75 percent of the buildings in Edipizari were destroyed by virtue of failure of non-ductile concrete. And within this block aerial view here, you see approximately 100 percent of the buildings severely damaged or collapsed because of failure in these types of structures. This is a closer view. This is one that happens to be taken from Karamazel in Turkey. I am going to focus in on this connection between the column and the frame. You will see this beam column connection, in here, where there is inadequate steel both in confinement and also in connection. It is these types of details that give rise to the collapse mechanisms that arise during the earthquake. Here is another example of the kinds of breakout and inadequate support that are associated with these types of structures.
Not only in the U.S. do we have a significant inventory of non-ductile concrete buildings in California, but we have a very significant inventory of these buildings outside of California in seismic areas such as Washington State, the New Madrid area (that is Missouri, Tennessee, and Arkansas, Charleston, South Carolina, and even Boston, Massachusetts. This places a substantial portion of U.S. building stock at risk.
To give a little illustration, here is a picture from San Francisco where we have identified locations with a high density of non-ductile concrete structures. We should not think we are safe because our code adoption and compliance are better than Turkey's. Upwards of 80 percent of U.S. building stock in earthquake vulnerable areas was designed before modern ductile design practices were incorporated into codes. Hence, these buildings may behave similarly as those in Turkey because neither benefits from sufficient steel reinforcement to allow the structures to accommodate seismic deformation.
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Mr. Chairman, there is an urgent need in this country to develop an inventory of buildings in seismically active areas of the U.S. to identify where non-ductile concrete buildings and other vulnerable structures, such as unreinforced masonry and open-first-story timber frame apartments, are located. All citizens should have access to knowledge about the buildings they live and they work in. But this type of inventory currently is not available.
Now, it is not just high occupancy non-ductile concrete buildings, there are also critical lifelines, such as bridges, that are also vulnerable for the same reasons. This is a picture from the Loma Prieta earthquake. You will see that this is a picture of the I–880 Cyprus structure which failed in the East Bay. If we go several hundred miles north to the city of Seattle, a very similar structure, the Alaska Wave Viaduct carries 100,000 passengers a day. It is designed similarly, similar type of principles went into the design as the I–80 which failed. This is a 1950s structure and it has the same kinds of potential problems associated with it.
I would like to also show you some of the visions or images of damage from the faulting in Taiwan. This is the Chelungpu fault. You will see the rapids in that river didn't exist before the earthquake. That fault intersected a bridge and tore it down. This is a section of the town of Feng-Yuan which was close to that bridge. You will see that that person is approximately 5 feet 4 inches tall. That fault offset is 15 to 16 feet. It went right through six buildings. This is probably the most significant and amazing aspect of fault deformation in Taiwan. It is the Shihkang Dam or reservoir. You will see that the original reservoir or the dam is on the left-hand side, the north, and there is approximately 30 feet of vertical offset through this dam. It has lost 40 percent of the raw water supply in Taichung County.
Now we're not without problems with respect to fault rupture in the United States. This is a picture of the Hayward fault in the East Bay. Schools, reservoirs, hospitals, and the University of California at Berkeley football stadium are built on the Hayward fault. Other critical structures in California are intersected by the Calaveras and San Andreas faults. And similar situations apply in other States. For example, in Seattle there is the Seattle fault, and in Salt Lake City there is the Wasatch fault. It should be recognized also that all major water supplies from external water sheds for Los Angeles cross the San Andreas fault, and a similar situation pertains to water supply pipelines for San Francisco, crossing either the Hayward or the San Andreas faults.
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To summarize then. Lessons learned for implementation require I think an inventory of potentially lethal buildings in the U.S. in seismically hazardous areas. Support at the community level for ongoing projects to reduce building hazards, such as FEMA's Project Impact and the strategic Plan 2005, and I have got commentary in my written testimony explicitly about these. And then a reassessment of active fault zones.
Lessons learned for research opportunities. We need advanced technologies to retrofit these vulnerable buildings and lifelines. We need to take a closer look at fault rupture patterns, mapping procedures, and zoning approaches. We need to take a look at the influence of site conditions on transient motions, particularly site amplification and the effects on ground failure. And then, of course, we need advanced research in the social sciences to help in the development of programs for potentially lethal structures. Thank you very much.
Chairman SMITH. Dr. O'Rourke, thank you.
Dr. Wallace.
TESTIMONY OF TERRY C. WALLACE, PRESIDENT SEISMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA, PROFESSOR OF GEOSCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA, TUCSON, AZ
Dr. WALLACE. Well, as pointed out by the Chairman and Representative Johnson, this series of earthquakes that have happened over the last few months are quite newsworthy. In fact, earthquakes in the news is hard to get away from. This two month period is exceptional in terms of newsworthiness of the earthquakes. But from the standpoint of seismology, this two month period is really not very unusual.
On average, we have 15 to 18 earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or larger yearly. So we are going to have this somewhere in the globe. Further, the annual loss of life from these earthquakes, at 20,000 people, is not truly exceptional. We can look even in this decade, we had an earthquake back in 1990 in Iran that killed 50,000. So although we have seen this very much in the news, I think that we need to realize that this is a phenomena which is ongoing and we there is a lot of basic research that remains to be done to understand this phenomena.
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I would like to highlight today a couple of the seismological lessons we have learned from one of these earthquakes, and that is the Turkey earthquake. In many ways, the earthquake that occurred in Turkey, it occurred on the North Anatolia fault, is very similar to the San Andreas fault in California. As you can see from this figure, both of these faults are the same geologic type of faults. They are strike-slip, they have a sense of motion which we call right-lateral.
When we superimpose Turkey and California together, they look remarkably similar. The faults are about 1,000 kilometers long. The largest earthquake we know to have occurred on the San Andreas was 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake, with a magnitude about 8.3. It had a rupture length of 400 kilometers. The largest earthquake this century occurred in 1939. It had a magnitude of 8.0 and its rupture length was 350 kilometers. So the similarity between these two great strike-slip earthquakes highlights the importance of understanding what occurred in 1999 in Izmit and being able to hopefully translate that to reducing hazard along the San Andreas.
Now one of the biggest seismological surprises of the Turkey earthquake was the nature of the rupture pattern. In Western Turkey, the North Anatolia fault system is quite complex. That means that the fault itself has bends, it has jogs, there are individual fault splays that come off to the sides. Conventional wisdom has been that when you have a fault that is complex and has bends and splays, that these little sections of the fault operate more or less independently. And since you have sections operating independently, this is going to end up limiting the size of the earthquake. Earthquakes are going to be confined within one segment or the other.
But what we found out from the Turkey earthquake was that this was not the case. There were at least four sections along the North Anatolia fault which ruptured during this earthquake and it certainly challenged our previous assumptions. The faulting appeared to jump over segment boundaries, making the earthquake much larger than would be expected by the length of any given segment.
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Now I can make a comparison of the North Anatolia fault near the city of Izmit to the San Andreas fault in the Bay Area of California. These are LANDSAT images, and they probably don't show up real well on what you are looking at there, but it is fair to say that the character of the North Anatolia fault near Izmit and the Bay Area are eerily similar. The East Bay region, where there are two prominent fault strands which, as has been pointed out in the testimony before me, run under extremely high population centers. The 1999 Turkey earthquake is a wake-up call for preparing for the inevitable earthquake that is going to occur in the East Bay.
If we look at the next figure, we can actually see that when we look at these Calaveras and Hayward faults, we have identified segments on these boundaries. Traditionally, we have always said, ''Oh, we have got segments; this is how big the earthquakes we should expect in the East Bay.'' But we have learned from Izmit that we are probably grossly underestimating the maximum size we can have from an individual event there. And since the damage associated with a much larger earthquake would be much more disastrous, it really should serve as a wake up call.
On a larger scale, the North Anatolia fault is an extremely good proxy for visualizing what we call the earthquake cycle for the entire San Andreas. This century there has been a remarkable westward migration of larger earthquakes along the North Anatolia fault. Starting in 1939, there have been seven earthquakes of magnitudes between 7.0 and 8.0 which have progressively moved from west to east along this fault. I like to think of this as basically unzipping the fault from the west to the east. This suggests that one earthquake that occurs strongly effects where the next earthquake is going to occur. And so we get this very strong pattern; an earthquake occurs, the next one occurs slightly to the west of it, after that occurs the next one occurs, and so on.
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So we should ask the question: Should we expect to see the same thing on the San Andreas? We have not seen such a pattern yet, but we have developed a theory to look at how stress transfers from one earthquake to the next. Ross Stein at the U.S. Geological Survey has used the North Anatolia fault cycle to refine a theory which strongly suggests that we can begin to understand when the next earthquake is going to occur.
This figure that is showing here shows this unzippering, and the colors that you see in that image go from basically cold colors which tell us where stress is relieved because we had an earthquake to hot colors where stress is concentrated. After the series of earthquakes leading up to 1999, there is a red bull's eye on the town of Izmit. This paper was published in 1996 and basically says you should expect a big earthquake, Izmit. And, of course, that came true back in August.
We haven't seen the exact same thing happen on the San Andreas. But just this last weekend, as you know, there was this large earthquake in the Mohave Desert. And so on the next figure I would like to look and see how we can see a similar thing happening for this region of southern California. I remind you that back in 1992 there was a very large earthquake in the Mohave Desert. This earthquake, which we call the Landers earthquake, ruptured a fault that was roughly 70 kilometers long and it was a magnitude 7.3. In the figure that you are looking at here, the red crucifix form or red cross form show where stress is concentrated. And, lo and behold, there is a bull's eye right where the Hector Mine earthquake, the earthquake that occurred on Saturday, was. So in other words, the earthquake that occurred in 1992 prepared the zone for this earthquake to occur today.
If we look at that figure in detail, we do see that the stress has increased along several sections of the southern San Andreas. This is a concern. We have not had an earthquake there since 1710 and we now obviously have heightened stress conditions which may lead to a great earthquake within the next few years.
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I will close my testimony by saying that basic research, as funded through the NEHERP program, has been vital for our understanding of earthquakes. We are just beginning to learn enough about earthquakes that we begin to impact their hazard. There are three things to keep in mind. Although it is proper to concentrate on U.S. earthquake hazard, we cannot wait for U.S. earthquakes to occur to do our research. Every time an earthquake happens globally it provides or potentially provides a definitive piece of the puzzle that will save lives. Secondly, seismology is a data-driven science and it requires high-quality instrumentation to make progress in understanding the seismic source. This committee's farsightedness in authorizing the Advance Seismic System is a commitment to doing that for this country. Finally, basic research is essential to hazard reduction. We are not at the state that we can adequately predict seismic phenomena; by prediction, I mean we cannot predict where earthquakes are, but we also cannot exactly predict what expected ground motion will happen, we cannot say how earthquakes will interact, and we cannot even say definitively what controls the size of earthquakes. Thank you very much.
Chairman SMITH. Dr. Wallace, thank you.
Mr. Tamillow.
TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL TAMILLOW, BATTALION CHIEF, FAIRFAX COUNTY FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICE, FAIRFAX, VA
Mr. TAMILLOW. Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank the committee for allowing me to speak today. Certainly, the response to catastrophic earthquakes is a daunting undertaking. Response will be required at all levels, State, Federal, and local.
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My venue is the response from Urban Search and Rescue Response task forces which have been developed for the most difficult and complex search and rescue operations; essentially extrication of live victims from collapsed reinforced concrete structures, exactly as Dr. O'Rourke just showed. This medium requires special tools, equipment and operational procedures, certainly for the safety of the entrapped victim, but equally for the rescue personnel as well. Our ideal would be to have Urban Search and Rescue task forces in place and operating within the first 24 hours of the occurrence.
We benefit from the effective job FEMA has done in developing the national Urban Search and Rescue Response System over the last ten years. Fairfax County and our sister organization Miami Dade Fire and Rescue benefit from a parallel program under the U.S. Agency for International Development.
I would essentially like to speak to four main issues in this regard. The first is the immediacy of the response. Certainly, the window of opportunity for life-saving efforts is short. The vast majority of people will be saved in the first three to four days. The following aspects certainly affect our response time. Primarily it is the assessment and determination of any type of response that is required. Once that is done, the tax forces themselves and other response entities have activation and mobilization activities. The main concern would be the transport and availability of transport to get these resources on site. Once on site, task forces and other resources have set up time.
Our biggest concern is that many hours can be lost in just determining the severity and subsequent damage of an earthquake. Our experience has shown this can be anywhere from four to twelve hours, if not longer. We feel that the activation and mobilization of resources, especially Urban Search and Rescue, need to be given the highest priority.
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An Urban Search and Rescue task force is essentially composed of about 66 personnel, and we have about 25–30 tons of tools, supplies, and equipment. There has been a lot of training that has gone on and a well-trained and exercised task force can activate all these personnel and this equipment within six hours or less. In fact, in Fairfax County we are now doing it in less than four hours.
As I said, the most critical determinant though is just transport to the impact area. The essential thinking under the Federal Emergency Management Agency is that task forces within the first 500 miles will be transported by ground, and this can be done pretty easily with commercial bus and trucks to transport the teams, but transport times may be up to about 12 hours. So with this in mind, we feel that task forces would be in the area no sooner than 18 hours after activation. Many task forces are much farther away and would require transport by aircraft. Our most effective method is the U.S. Air Force. Currently, we are using the C–5 transport aircraft which can hold a full 66-person task force and the equipment cache. Our biggest problem there is just the availability of the craft quick enough with the flight crew rest rotation cycles and the like. Factoring in six or seven hour coast-to-coast flying, and then all the off-loading that is required at the arrival airport, we do not feel that the majority of these task forces will even be on site within the first 20 to 24 hours.
Once we do get resources in the area, our most problematic issue if just the accessibility to the immediate sites. Prior experience has shown transportation corridors are extremely vulnerable, especially bridges, as Dr. O'Rourke just showed. A single bridge down can totally close an area, and we faced this both in Turkey and Taiwan. Due to this aspect, we would certainly hope that we would have the availability of a large amount of rotor wing aircraft, helicopters, to be able to move around. That is easier said than done.
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Once we do get the resources on site, a task force itself cannot operate effectively until all its tools, supplies, and equipment are accessible and organized. We set up what we call a Base of Operations. If we throw all of our personnel at this, we can set it up in as quick as two hours. If we have to immediately start search and rescue operations, we can do this in about three to four hours.
When you factor all these timeframes in together, we feel that the majority of resources going in will not even be on site for the first 30-plus hours.
Next would be just the size of the response to a large-scale earthquake. Certainly the impact of an earthquake in a heavily populated urban area, you could have many buildings down within a single city, and, unfortunately, you could have multiple cities affected. An Urban Search and Rescue task force is a formidable rescue asset. It is comprised of four major sections of search, rescue, medical, logistics, and management functions, and they are designed to sustain 24-hour operations. With four inherent Rescue Squads, they can handle multiple, simultaneous rescue operations. In fact, we had to do this in Izmit, Turkey. For over a 13-hour period, we handled six separate rescues, rescuing four live victims. Out of the 70 people I had there, I had 3 people left at the Base of Operations and every significant piece of equipment we had was fully taxed.
Conversely, you could have multiple task forces operating on a single building, as we had in Oklahoma City where over a 13-day period we had 11 Urban Search and Rescue task forces operating on one building. Currently within FEMA's Urban Search and Rescue Response System we have about 25 deployable task forces.
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Our experiences in Turkey and Taiwan have illustrated that you could expect maybe 20 to 30 international rescue teams. And if we are very overwhelmed this certainly should be utilized. Since there is no standard for these teams, they can range anywhere from a small 10 to 15 person search team up to larger, sophisticated teams of 70 to 100 people.
The third area is disaster assessment. This is very problematic because the people trying to do the assessment, especially at the local and State level, have been impacted by the event. FEMA has developed a Rapid Needs Assessment program to help with that. The same problems are involved in terms of getting these people in quickly enough to do an assessment to decide what is to be needed.
The affected populace is certainly a concern. The definition of a disaster is when the local emergency responders have been overwhelmed. The trouble is we live in what we term a ''911 society'' where people immediately expect to pick up the phone and have help arrive. We need for people to understand that the vast majority of the populace probably will not have any professional or formalized help within the first 24 to 72 hours. We need training at the first responder level and training procedures just for citizens to help themselves and their neighbors.
I will conclude my remarks at this point. Thank you, sir.
Chairman SMITH. Mr. Tamillow, thank you very much. Is the United States effort, Mr. Tamillow, in search and rescue, how does that compare with other countries?
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Mr. TAMILLOW. We feel we have the state of the art. It is extremely gratifying. We have been working on this program with FEMA and USAID for about 11 years now and Fairfax County has been extremely fortunate in being able to deploy actually three times in the last thirteen months if you include the embassy bombing in Nairobi. What I find most gratifying is that the procedures that we have worked out, kind of creating out of a vacuum in committee meetings, having now gone out and actually applied them, they are working tremendously well. So our biggest problem now is not the development, it is actually the exercising of the teams to broaden this capability from the classroom, so to speak, into the real world. We need funding for exercising of the system.
Chairman SMITH. How do you expand your experience and knowledge to other first responders around this country and the world? How is that done? Somehow are your experiences, and the successful equipment and the less apt equipment, and the ability to move in, how do you get that advice out to first responders around the country?
Mr. TAMILLOW. We have a very effective system under FEMA to get the lessons learned—in fact, we have just been working on that recently with FEMA—our lessons learned from the past earthquakes into the FEMA system for the Urban Search and Rescue task forces. U.S. Fire Administration has done a similar lower-scale process in terms of trying to get basic skills out to the local emergency responders because that is where the vast majority of the people are going to be saved is by the emergency responders in the immediate area and by the immediate mutual aid that can be brought in.
In the international arena, under OFDA or USAID we are also working with all the other international teams.
Chairman SMITH. To the other three witnesses, have we learned enough about the predictability and severity of earthquakes around known fault lines that it should change public policy in terms of the discouragement for building along those fault lines? Should we change public policy based on the information and knowledge and predictability that we now have?
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We will start with you, Mr. Person, then maybe go right down through Mr. O'Rourke and Dr. Wallace.
Mr. PERSON. I think that we have come a long way in educating the public as to what earthquakes can do, and especially for people that are in earthquake-prone areas. And we continue to do that. So we have risk maps that are out there where we use all these data and put risk maps out that really are not understood by the general public. I think that is a very important thing, that the general public understand the risk that they are living in and be able to pass that on to the families and what have you. Most of the time the general public does not understand what you are saying about the risk from earthquakes.
Chairman SMITH. Dr. O'Rourke.
Mr. O'ROURKE. Yes. In fact, there are even laws in California. The Alquist-Priolo Act has set a limitation on development in active fault zones for structures or developments that would have been planned let's say from the early 1970s onward.
Part of our problem both with structures and facilities in active fault zones and with buildings that did not benefit from ductile principles, that is buildings designed prior to about 1972, and in other States perhaps later than that, is that they were not able to benefit from some of these later advances both in design principles and also in siting strategies. As a consequence, when we imagine a frequency curve of the proportion of our building stock that would have been designed or built in various sectors of time, if you were to look at that, you would see that 80 percent of our building stock, and perhaps more depending upon the location, constitutes structures that were put into place prior to the mid-1970s.
That means they did not benefit from these advances in research and these advances in design. And we have a serious problem with them because they constitute the largest proportion of our building stock. What do we do about all the buildings that were in place before we were able to effectively put these codes into place? And here is where a significant challenge I think comes up, because not only do we need retrofitting technologies that are cost-effective, and that is the key because this is a very complex social and economic issue to try to go in, identify these structures, be able to put together some sort of a good fix for them.
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Chairman SMITH. Dr. O'Rourke, I apologize for interrupting, but my time is about up and I would like to allow time for Dr. Wallace to respond.
Mr. O'ROURKE. Sure.
Chairman SMITH. Dr. Wallace, your response?
Dr. WALLACE. Okay. I guess I would emphasize Dr. O'Rourke's comments. If we look at the Taiwan earthquake, it was magnitude 7.6, it was a thrusting kind of event in which we had convergence. It is a good analog for what we might expect in the L.A. basin. The Northridge earthquake occurred in 1994, $20-$30 billion worth of damage in that particular event, it occurred at a fortuitous time so loss of life was actually fairly minimized. But if we take the Taiwan earthquake and put it in the L.A. basin, we are probably getting the maximum credible size earthquake we can expect in the L.A. basin but it would be 900 times larger in terms of the energy it would release. If you put that earthquake at a different time of the day, it could be a truly disastrous event.
And so we have a problem. We already have 14 million people that live on top this potentially disastrous earthquake. So what we really need to do is we are not done with developing the technology for early warning; when the earthquake occurs how do we shut everything off. We are not done with understanding what the precursory phenomenon is before an earthquake occurs.
So we are making great progress but we are not close to where we should be and we already have a large number of people that have built structures in at-risk regions.
Chairman SMITH. Representative Johnson.
Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. It is my understanding that the building codes or the architectural requirements are similar in Los Angeles as they are in Taiwan. Were you able to detect that from the actual damage that was done?
Mr. O'ROURKE. In Taiwan, certainly there is a tremendous contrast between the damage to structures there and the damage to structures in Turkey. Part of the problem in Turkey was, of course, compliance. Turkey actually does have a modern building code but it was not really adhered to, particularly in a lot of the locations where the most severe damage occurred.
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In Taiwan, where problems occurred very often they occurred in, again, non-ductile concrete that had been put into place prior to let's say the mid-1970s, or it occurred in structures where certain things were done to put too much load on certain columns on the first floor. A lot of these structures that you would have seen in the news having tilted over were a consequence of what we call a ''soft story'' effect, where there were openings in the structure on one side and a lot of the load got shifted onto these columns that were not adequately supported and they collapsed and fell.
And so these are truly wake-up calls because there are plenty of structures in the U.S. that would behave similarly. And it represents a significant challenge to us in terms of being able to affect policy to get people out of them or at least make them safer by virtue of retrofitting technologies.
Ms. JOHNSON. How well are we doing in terms of the areas that we know are more prone to earthquakes? They seem to be moving about the country now. Texas had never heard of them until about two or three years ago, and even up this way, since I have been in Congress I think we have had a similar one. Do you see that there is any attention being given around the country or in vulnerable, and those that might become vulnerable, areas to these kind of codes that would help to protect some of the structures and thereby save life and destruction?
Mr. O'ROURKE. There is a considerable amount of attention being paid. I know, for example, that FEMA has a Project Impact program, as an example. One of the most effective ways to get communities to pay attention to hazards, and that particular program deals with all natural hazards including earthquakes, is to get it to the local level where you get participation from local governments, local citizens, and also private enterprises that ban together and worry about what is going on in their communities. So programs like this I think deserve special consideration and perhaps some additional support because they actually do get to the grassroots.
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Ultimately, civil infrastructure becomes a problem of civil communities; people have to solve their own problems. We can set course, and we need to set course. And again, I would like to emphasize the fact that most people have no idea what kind of structure they are living in and that information is not readily available, it is hard to get. Some communities have adopted measures that allow it to be available much more easily than others. But by and large, most citizens do not know the kind of building that they live in. This is unfortunate.
Ms. JOHNSON. Is there some kind of relationship being built for architects and those who design buildings to come together and share this information through our local code departments of State or county or whatever?
Mr. O'ROURKE. Yes. There are a number of activities of a number of professional societies—structural engineering societies, architectural societies, geological societies—that work on procedures and methods to reduce the risk and reduce the exposure to hazard.
A lot of this of course comes down to dissemination of information and public education. And I think we have made great strides there. Certainly, the fact that we have had so many earthquakes recently has alerted people to the significant consequences that can arise therefrom. But the concern about public welfare and public safety is always one that requires a little bit of encouragement from a governmental Federal and State level to sort of set the course and allow the communities to get in line.
Ms. JOHNSON. Does that mean us?
Chairman SMITH. I think so.
Mr. O'ROURKE. I think so.
Ms. JOHNSON. Tell me a little bit about the aftershocks. What influences, whether sometimes there is more damage than the initial.
Mr. O'ROURKE. Well, I can tell you about an aftershock in Golcuk because we drove into Golcuk when there was a 5.8 aftershock almost immediately upon arrival and about seven structures came down. We were visiting the naval base at Golcuk at the time. Typically, aftershocks are very dangerous because the building stock has already been severely weakened by the primary shock. It is not uncommon if you go to these places for people to be in these damaged structures looking for loved ones, looking for personal belongings, or actually there were some structural engineers that were injured in Golcuk because they were going about examining buildings at the time to see what the state of repair were for these structures. So it is a very severe problem. In Taiwan, some of the aftershocks were large, 6.8 magnitude, two aftershocks of 6.8 magnitude. This is as large as a main shock in many earthquakes that we would take very seriously here in the United States.
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Ms. JOHNSON. I think my time has expired. Thank you.
Chairman SMITH. I think we will keep questioning these gentlemen for a little while. So I will sort of carry on.
Most of your work is with commercial rather than residential, or is it broader that you analyze residential structures as well as commercial structures? Do we have guidelines that we put out to the architects on how to build a house that is going to best withstand shock?
Mr. PERSON. I think one of the things that has been happening recently with the general public and especially with kids and working with them is I think they are starting to question their relatives now and say what kind of house am I moving in, is this built to withstand the shaking of a certain magnitude earthquake, and these kinds of things.
Chairman SMITH. Who do they ask that question to?
Mr. PERSON. They will ask that of the realtor. And so I think that they are getting to the point now that they know that people are aware of buildings and where they are built and how they are built. So I think they are going to be doing more in building these residential homes that will withstand shaking for any given earthquake that we have.
Chairman SMITH. Where can an individual go now to find out guidelines for the structure, the architecture design of a home that is going to be earthquake resistant?
Mr. PERSON. It is not very many places you can go. I think FEMA has done a lot in putting out information on how homes should be built and this type of thing. But the information is not as much available as it should be.
Chairman SMITH. So, staff, let's get to FEMA, let's get it on the Internet, let's start making this information available.
Any other comments along this line? Dr. O'Rourke?
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Mr. O'ROURKE. Well, I will just point out that there is a lot of information that is actually available on the Internet. Between the USGS and FEMA, they have a Web page where you can actually put in your zip code and look at the probability of the acceleration you should expect in the next thirty years. We have done a remarkable job in bringing us up to this.
Chairman SMITH. Yes. In terms of the potential danger likelihood of an earthquake. But I have got to tell you a story. I was riding home on an airplane going back to Michigan and the gentleman beside me said he was going to give a speech at an architects' convention. I said what are you going to talk on, and he said I am going to tell them some of the changes that we need to consider to make homes more durable for wind and earthquake and what have you. And that excited me, of course. And he went on to tell me that they tried to look all over the country for shaking tables and could not get into any. They finally found that the Army had a shaking table so they went to this shaking table and built a traditional house with the 2x4s and the plates on top and shook it and found out. And this was news to him and it was news to his audience. And so that is why I am wondering if we are doing our job. The bottom line is that they discovered that in all this shaking what came apart was the wall board nailed to the single 2x4 at the bottom where the studs come up and never broke apart from the double studding at the top. And so simply putting a double studding every four feet at the bottom, they stopped the breaking apart from that level of shaking.
And so the lesson to me was how many people know this information if three weeks ago he was going to give a speech to the architects? What should we be doing federally to get more of this information out?
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And Mr. Tamillow, in terms of your discoveries and information and experience, what do we tell people when they go through an earthquake? I suspect in California most of those people have taken the trouble to know, and the other 39 States that have some vulnerability to earthquake, I am wondering if we do have the knowledge. We do not have many earthquakes in Michigan, but my wife and daughter went out to California to experience the quake two Saturdays ago. [Laughter.]
They did not go out for that purpose but they were out there and they woke up in the middle of the night with the shaking of the house in Pasadena.
How are you getting this information out that you discover? How do we advise people? Should we be more aggressive at the Federal level in terms of legislation that we structure to get this information out to people to help them better decide how to build their homes, and how should we direct Federal policy so that FEMA is less apt to give disaster relief for those municipalities that do not follow guidelines if they are in a vulnerable area? So, your comments? I am looking for how we change Federal policy based on our experience and what we have been able to find out.
Mr. TAMILLOW. Yes, sir. It seems like the biggest problem is just getting the people's attention for these type of things. Certainly there is a high awareness in southern California.
Chairman SMITH. My wife and my daughter, they are all ears right now.
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Mr. TAMILLOW. We try to feed our experiences back into FEMA with Project Impact. We would hope that that type of information would get out to the public just for people to know what to do during an earthquake. I think there is a little bit of discussion there as to what is exactly the right thing to do during an earthquake much less right immediately afterwards. It just seems like the biggest thing to us though is that people expect that somebody is going to come and help them immediately. We need to educate people that there should be a certain level of preparedness for them to help themselves after that. And that just does not happen on its own.
Chairman SMITH. Dr. Wallace, in our last authorization bill that we passed a couple of months ago, we dramatically expanded our efforts for the seismic research. Can you give me a better understanding of how this advanced seismic research technology implementation is going to help us.
Dr. WALLACE. Well, I think that last Saturday is a perfect example. If you would indulge me, I will show you something that was produced in terms of the shake map within a few minutes after the earthquake occurred, which leads into exactly what we are talking about.
In fact, southern California is probably at the forefront of what we might expect for the Advanced National Seismic System because we have the large number of seismometers there and we are in the process of building a system which can on the basis of shaking tell us exactly where the earthquake is, where the emergency responders should be going within minutes, not within a half-hour or anything else like that. It also alerts us to what we may see in terms of shaking may be affecting other faults, where we may expect the next of earthquakes, and so on. We really have this small little area as a proof of concept principle for the Advanced Seismic System.
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I think that Saturday was remarkable in how well it worked. We had an earthquake, magnitude 7.0, it would be disastrous except it was out in the middle of the Mohave Desert. But it allowed us to look and see how well that worked. And to be perfectly honest, to be able to have that information within two or three minutes on the entire level of shaking all throughout southern California is a remarkable technological advancement that in the future will dramatically save lives and increase our understanding of earthquakes all across the country.
Chairman SMITH. Congresswoman Morella is here. But Representative Johnson, if you have some questions, we will take you first.
Ms. JOHNSON. He just commented I think on what was in my mind. In Texas, we are prone to have tornadoes. And what we have observed is we have not been able to figure out many ways to save property, but because of the technology we are able to give prior warning and save lives. Are we near that type technology for earthquakes do you think?
Dr. WALLACE. I think that we have got a ways to go before we are able to say you are going to have an earthquake tomorrow so prepare for it, unlike a tornado where we have some warning it is coming towards us. But if we compare where we are in 1999 to where we were ten years ago before the Loma Prieta earthquake, the advancement is huge and it has come about because of this basic research element and also feeding into engineering and so on. We are definitely at the point that we are beginning to be able to say an earthquake has occurred, you have three minutes to make sure you do not run your trains across the Mohave Desert, shut them off. So this is the kind of thing that really has changed. You should not worry about Texas, but Texas has had a significant loss of life due to earthquakes over near Wink back in 1939. I think when you look at this it really is a national problem because it is not just the loss of life, the economic loss affects everybody.
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Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you.
Chairman SMITH. Mr. O'Rourke and Mr. Person could sort of respond to the same question.
Mr. O'ROURKE. Sure. One area that we have made some great strides in too is in locating various site conditions. The Loma Prieta earthquake, for example, showed very well that, depending on where you live in an area that is shaken by an earthquake, you can experience strong motions and effects such as soil liquefaction where the ground literally turns into a fluid because of elevated pore water pressures, and depending upon where you live you can experience that earthquake in a much more intense way. The marina is a good example of that in San Francisco in 1989.
Our abilities to locate these places and to map them and to get that information out to folks has increased and improved quite substantially. There are a number of mapping efforts that are going on in California and other States to identify these zones.
Again we come back to the issue that once these zones have been identified, as our structures that are potentially dangerous have been identified, then we have to do something about that on a societal and a local community basis. And I think the research has been progressing and feeding good information into communities, and organizations like FEMA or the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute disseminates lots of information to local communities. But we have gotten to the point where implementation of this requires a little more effort, a little more understanding.
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Chairman SMITH. Mr. Person.
Mr. PERSON. What I would say is that the Advanced National Seismic System that the USGS is attempting to put together would be very helpful in being able to find out where we have strong shaking in any given earthquake and be able to dispatch what is needed to that area. It has been mentioned here several times about what happened in the Loma Prieta earthquake when the epicenter was approximately 40 miles south of where a lot of the damage was. The same thing happened in Mexico when they had the earthquake in 1985. The epicenter was 235 miles from Mexico City but yet Mexico City took a real beating and it knocked down buildings and killed as many as 20,000 people.
If we can be able to do this with our new system, this will greatly enhance our efforts to get there very quickly and rescue people. We have to think about many of the regional centers may be knocked out in a big earthquake because they are in earthquake prone areas and maybe we in Golden will not be knocked out and we will have to step in and be able to give the information from our center. So there is another important part that we would play in trying to save lives in the case of a destructive earthquake.
Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you.
Chairman SMITH. Representative Morella.
Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for the panel for being at an education meeting since we are discussing that on the floor now. I appreciate scanning your testimony and having you here.
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I know the title is ''Lessons Learned from Recent Damaging Earthquakes,'' and as somebody who has been in Armenia recently and saw what we are trying to do with that 1988 earthquake, and then to have one occur in Turkey, in Taiwan. One of the things I have seen in here, we have somebody from Fairfax County in Virginia, too, I have seen that people have worked together. Whoever thought the Armenians and the Turks would help each other? Or the Greeks and the Turks? Or that we would have people from the United States going over there to help and people would ban together? So I think that is one thing it has done too, it has said to people we need to help each other in such a time of catastrophe.
But now on a scientific question. These recent earthquakes in Turkey and Asia and Mexico, I wonder have they taught us anything about America's non-California seismic regions, such as the New Madrid region in Missouri. My experts tell me there is a possibility that you could have problems with bridges. I wonder if you might explore that a bit.
Dr. WALLACE. Well, I think that we had a wide diversity of earthquakes this last two months and some of them are directly applicable to other regions, and you mentioned New Madrid. I think that some of the lessons we have learned in terms of immediate response are incredibly important. But just as important, probably the two regions of the United States we kind of ignore but probably have the greatest likelihood of very large earthquakes are the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. This recent earthquake that occurred in Mexico is an analog for the earthquake we may expect in the Seattle region and certainly is a very small earthquake compared to the earthquakes we experienced in Alaska back in 1964.
Understanding how the earthquake cycle occurs in Mexico, where the plate motions are a little bit more rapid, is directly transportable to our understanding of what to expect, for example, along the Aleutians in Alaska. So they are giving us this incremental knowledge base that we need to have when we look at this. So I think that when we talk about translating to other regions, those are the most applicable.
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But New Madrid, we go out there and we look at this right now and we see some of the damage effects, we run a trench, we think we see some soil liquefaction where it has turned to fluids in the past. We can now compare that to what we see in Taiwan right now and that gives us a snapshot of what actually happened and we are able then to project to something that happened 200 years ago. And so it is really clarifying what we should expect when New Madrid repeats, because it will, that is just your logic uniformitarism, so we now have a better idea of what it is.
Mrs. MORELLA. Would then, following up on that, the bridges spanning the Mississippi be able to withstand it? And the implications.
Mr. O'ROURKE. Well, the implications are substantial. First of all, the New Madrid area is one where there is what we call a lot of recent alluvial sediments, these are very soft, loose sand deposits. And we know from the records of the settlers in the 1811 and 1812 sequence of earthquakes there that there was massive soil liquefaction. In fact, the course of the Mississippi River was dammed and a lake which exists today, Realfoot Lake, was created as a consequence of these massive ground failures that were generated in 1811 and 1812.
We have a variety of bridges that cross the Mississippi at those locations as well as quite a few essential and critical lifelines, such as substantial amount of natural gas and petroleum pipelines that provide for heating in Michigan, for example. This area is one that not only is a severe risk for the people there locally, but it has implications in terms of delivering important and critical facilities to other people in the Northeast and the Midwest.
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So this is a significant problem and it is one of the cruxes of earthquake engineering research and of earthquake engineering and seismology that this is a high-consequence, low recurrence zone. The return interval of earthquakes in the New Madrid area is disputed or at least it is discussed a lot, but it is somewhere maybe between 700 or 1,000 years, something of that sort, and people could correct me here. Yet it is inevitable that it will occur. What do you do when you have such a long return interval for a great magnitude earthquake? It becomes a significant societal problem, one that we need to try to resolve. As I have said before in my testimony, I think we need to start by identifying what people live in and give them the opportunity to make some decisions for themselves.
Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you. I wonder if anyone else wanted to comment on it. Mr. Person?
Mr. PERSON. Well, I think the New Madrid area, because of the long return period that we think we have there, it is very hard to convince people in the area that they should prepare for an earthquake. One of the things we talked about earlier is being able to go back and retrofit a lot of these buildings, and a lot of buildings in that area, Memphis, Tennessee and other places, those buildings will not withstand the shaking of a major or great earthquake. So those are some areas where it is very hard to get started in retrofitting the buildings. And when you compare that with what is happening in California, California has more damaging earthquakes more frequently than any other State and those people are believers.
Mr. TAMILLOW. Yes, ma'am. It has been interesting, because a lot of what we have talked about today has been in terms of the buildings, the infrastructure, transportation corridors and the like. What we have not talked about though, and there is tremendous concern, is just the hazardous materials problems. You talk about the New Madrid area with large areas of industrialization and the tremendous potential of hazard to the populace by hazardous material releases, it is interesting to know how we would respond in a large-scale to something like that on a local, State, and national level.
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Mrs. MORELLA. Incidentally, do you work with Montgomery County, Maryland Fire and Rescue?
Mr. TAMILLOW. I am with Fairfax County.
Mrs. MORELLA. I know you are.
Mr. TAMILLOW. But we work very closely with Montgomery County and Virginia Beach and a lot of the other task forces.
Mrs. MORELLA. And do you all have partnerships? I know my time has expired. But do you all work together? The Geological Survey, academia, engineering, FEMA, and this, is there a way that you all work together?
Dr. WALLACE. That is a good question. No. I represent Seismological Society of America. That is a professional society of seismology that is dedicated to understanding the earthquake problem and translating our knowledge to the Earthquake hazard reduction. So as a professional society, we do work together. There is no difference between a seismologist working on this problem versus academics versus the engineering community versus the USGS. There is actually pretty close cooperation.
What happens though is that you have an academic over here, like myself, that we often do not finish things, to be perfectly honest, and what we need to do is be able to dovetail that with an implementor, so that is where the Federal Government and that is where engineering comes together. And sometimes all those inter-fingerings that are done are not always the best. So that is where we need to work so we will be able to transmit seismological knowledge to an engineering knowledge to rescue knowledge. Those things are dramatically improved in this country as compared to the past, but, to be perfectly honest, we have a ways to go.
Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you.
Chairman SMITH. Let me ask a couple of questions in terms of insurance. Do you see the insurance industry coming to you and our research efforts in terms of possibly reducing their insurance rates for those who do not build near faults, or those individuals who decide to use the best possible architecture to mitigate any damage from earthquakes?
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Mr. O'ROURKE. I think the insurance industry needs to play an important role in this whole process. Reduction of deductibles or reduction of premiums for people who undertake significant efforts to reduce the hazard to their structure either by siting or by retrofitting or by building a better building should get some sort of reward. This is part of the system of reinforcing the incentives.
Chairman SMITH. They should. Have you seen anything? Has anybody, Dr. O'Rourke, come and said what is the best engineering so that we can consider adjusting our rates? Are you familiar with any interest in the insurance industry?
Mr. O'ROURKE. There are insurance people who have attended many meetings that I have been at that have been gathered together with various people in the engineering and scientific fields for earthquakes. I know that they have spent a lot of effort on loss estimation models to be able to get a better assessment as to what the potential losses might be from an earthquake in various areas to establish insurance premiums. So there has been a lot of effort in that particular area.
Chairman SMITH. Doctor, can we pursue that with some investigation or hearings in terms of meeting with the insurance industry. It seems to me that would be a reasonable encouragement.
Did you have any comments on that issue, Dr. Wallace?
Dr. WALLACE. Actually, I know very little about the insurance. It has been my experience so far that the insurance industry has come to many of these meetings. But I do not believe that there is anywhere documented that insurance rates have gone down.
Chairman SMITH. I would not be surprised that maybe they are just trying to decide how high they can set their premiums for those in vulnerable areas.
Dr. Wallace, what is a seismic measuring device? How many seismic measuring devices, if that is the correct terminology, would there be in California, for example?
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Dr. WALLACE. Oh, boy. We have different kinds of ways in which we measure seismic energy. In most cases we are looking for either ground shaking or how fast the ground is moving, and so we refer to these as seismometers or accelerometers. The total number of seismometers and accelerometers in California I would guess is on the order of 3,000, although I could be off a little bit, but it is on the order of 3,000. Some of these are designed to record what we call weak motion, that is the kind of motion that you or I might feel; some of them are strong ground motion, that is the——
Chairman SMITH. How are they networked? How are they monitored?
Dr. WALLACE. In southern California, we have this thing called TriNet in which all these kinds of seismometers are being brought together through real time data-gathering. That is how this shake map that I showed earlier was able to be produced so rapidly. That is the concept we want to do for the Advanced Seismic System. That brings everything together real time, distributes this, you can have all these products, the shaking anywhere in the United States at any given snapshot. That is only done for TriNet right now but, hopefully, we will come back here in seven years and tell you that as you speak we can show you what the shaking is anywhere in the U.S. right at the time. And that is where we want to go. Like I said, seismology can ultimately drive the engineering; it is a data science, we need to have that data there.
Chairman SMITH. Mr. Person, would you be familiar by any chance with any interest that you have observed of the insurance industry in USGS' seismic maps?
Mr. PERSON. Recently, I have been asked to come to several insurance companies and give them a talk on earthquakes. They have asked me to talk about certain States and this kind of a thing. They are showing an interest in wanting to know something about building, an interest in what risk is in certain States and what have you. I have done two of those recently. This has just begun so I think that they will be asking more and more about that. But I am not sure how much of that they have applied—like you say, I do not know what the rates are, but I do know in California the insurance rates are very, very expensive.
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Chairman SMITH. Representative Johnson, do you have any other questions?
Ms. JOHNSON. Nothing further.
Chairman SMITH. Representative Morella.
Mrs. MORELLA. Gentlemen, is there anything that we should do, could do, it would be helpful if we in Congress did to assist, whether it is in helping people work together in a more seamless fashion, or if there is something in any of the areas that have been discussed. If you would like to get your parting shot in, this is your chance.
Chairman SMITH. That was actually the question I was going to ask too, Connie.
Mrs. MORELLA. Good.
Chairman SMITH. So let's go right down the line and start at either end. If you were directing Congress to take action with some kind of financing or initiative to help mitigate possible future damage, what would your suggestion be?
Mr. PERSON. One of the things I would like to see is for us to be able to kind of respond in the same manner that Taiwan was able to respond with their intensity map. Within 102 seconds they had an intensity map that was showing where the strongest shaking was and they were able to get what was needed to that area. We really have a long way to go in the United States to be able to do that, be able to say this is where the greatest shaking is and we need to get there. This is why I spoke about our new seismic system that we can get installed to be able to do that. Time is of the essence when you are in an emergency mode of an earthquake and the quicker you can get there the more lives you can save. These graphs will be able to show you where the strongest shaking is and you can get there very, very quickly.
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Mr. O'ROURKE. I think the most important thing, and I do speak on behalf of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute on this, is that Congress really should be asked for a special allocation of funds to identify high-occupancy buildings in areas subjected to high seismic threat in California and other locations around the country. Buildings, and I have indicated in my written testimony, could be identified by rapid visual screening and then subjected to a FEMA 178–310, and I have explained that in the testimony also, evaluation oriented towards the collapse condition. We really and earnestly believe that people should not be subjected to a potential collapse in a building and not know that they are in that type of a structure.
With that list of potentially dangerous buildings, action then could shift to the States, to local jurisdictions, and to private owners. Programs might include State bond issues, and we also mention some insurance in here. So once people know, they could take it on themselves to work out their problems on a local basis.
And this program then would be a test for the earthquake community's ability to devise and sell real programs rather than give generalized advice. In other words, how effective are evaluation techniques? How effective are the earth sciences in providing useful site-specific data? How imaginative is the engineering community in devising effective and affordable risk reduction? And finally, how effective are our policy experts in developing politically acceptable policies and programs?
Mrs. MORELLA. If the gentleman would yield. I am just surprised, as a neophyte, I am surprised that this is not already done.
Mr. O'ROURKE. I am surprised, too.
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Chairman SMITH. Dr. Wallace.
Dr. WALLACE. I think what I would like to emphasize is that there needs to be a sustained and long interested research program in earthquake hazards and earthquake source processes. We tend to become very focused on earthquakes when we have an immediate disaster. So when the Turkey earthquake occurs, everybody is interested in earthquakes. We happen to have had several earthquakes which killed people. Everybody thinks there are earthquakes coming because of the millennium and so on. So we are focused on earthquakes.
But the fact of the matter is that if we go a two or three year period in which we do not have an earthquake in the United States, not only Congress, but local jurisdictions, local legislators become less interested in the problem. The only way we are going to make significant progress in saving lives is not only through the engineering, but through the science side. It requires the realization and the patience that it takes a long, sustained program. And that program has to have basic research and it has to have the infrastructure, the seismic networks and so on have to be in place and modern.
Mr. TAMILLOW. Yes, Mr. Chairman. As I said before, it has been interesting because we have been working on this Urban Search and Rescue Response program for about eleven years now and it is really gratifying that a lot of the work and the training and the equipment outfitting has pretty much come to fruition. A lot of this has been done by funding by the Federal Government through FEMA and their Urban Search and Rescue Response program, but, equally so, a tremendous amount was done by organizations at the local level, like Fairfax County, Montgomery County, letting their personnel be involved in this and the like.
The level that we are at now, what is required is actually exercising the system and testing it. You can do as much as you can on paper, but these things do not occur very often and it is unrealistic to expect people to do something that might only occur every three, four, five years and be very good at it.
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What we really need now is funding to do like regional exercises. Equally so with the U.S. military, we are having a lot of dialogue with them. We are an unusual animal to them and they have been very good about trying to get us aircraft quickly. It is a little problematic though if there was a major earthquake and all of a sudden FEMA or the Federal Government said we need 25 task forces moved immediately. So by having the funding to do maybe like regional exercises, it would really take us to the level of being truly proficient in what we are trying to do.
Chairman SMITH. Gentlemen, we thank you very much for your testimony. It has been a very interesting hearing. The record of this hearing will be held open for any other comments of any of the other members. We would ask the witnesses if you would consider responding to additional questions that we will send you in the mail.
Again, thank you all very, very much. An important topic. We appreciate your time and expertise.
And with that, this subcommittee is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:45 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned, to reconvene at the call of the Chair.]
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