Spurred by Japan, California eyes quake alert system

Yesterday's emergency alert arrived about the same time the first, weak, tremors came, so the only thing it warned me about was the severity of the quake. Good luck if you hope for a " tens of seconds’ early notice".

It came here in Tohoku, Iwate about 30 seconds after the minute long trembler had finished.

America is great at building things that make money - think port facilities and industrial parks - but long ago gave up on spending taxpayer money on infrastructure that, while quite for the public good, does not turn a profit.

This will never get off the ground, I am afraid.

Laguna, don't be so pessimistic! Don't forget about Google, Yahoo, twitter all from California!! Somebody will be intelligent enough to make it work like Yurekuru and make lots of $$$$$!!

I'm more worried about what happens after the quake. Things could get ugly rather quickly like that they did after Hurricane Katrina or during the Los Angeles riots.

Gotta be better than cats and dogs... last CA quake I lived through, my 2 cats just looked at me dumbfounded, like, wtf was that? One didn't even get up from napping, then went back to sleep. Big help.

The big difference between California and Japan is where the fault lies and what type of fault it is. Japan's fault is offshore quite a ways before subducting and passing deep under Japan. California's San Andreas fault is a "transform" (i.e. not much subduction going on - it's mostly two plates passing by each other) fault. This fault is on land for the most part and very near the major metropolitan areas in California and Baja California.

The Pacific plate (containing Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, Mexicali, and part of San Francisco) is traveling north while the North American Plate (containing the rest of the continental U.S. and Mexico) is traveling south. They slide past each other at about 35 millimeters per year. They say that in 20 million years or so, Los Angelas will be in the Aleutian Trench. If you wait until then, I'll bet L.A. property values will be CHEAP! ;-)

The point? The majority of Californians would get absolutely zero warning before they would be feeling the effects of a large quake. By the time they realized their phone was indicating a message and looked at it, they would already be shaking. Spend some more money on emergency response and building survivability rather than a warnig system of dubious value. What's good for Japan's purposes does not necessarily make it good for other earthquake-prone areas.