Earthquake Monitoring Is Indispensable : Republicans should not pay for their ‘contract with America’ by abolishing the U.S. Geological Survey.

One of the first things I do after an earthquake is turn on the television where seismologist Lucy Jones gives me the details: Where was the epicenter? What was the magnitude?

I know I have a lot of company. “Information makes an earthquake feel more manageable,” Jones explains.

Because she reports her facts from the seismological laboratory at Caltech in Pasadena, I always thought she was a Caltech employee. But she’s not. Jones is employed by the United States Geological Survey, a 115-year-old government agency.

With an annual budget of $580 million, the USGS dedicates more than half its efforts to analyzing the country’s water resources. It is also the largest map-making agency in the United States, with about 80,000 maps available to fill more than 1 million annual requests from hikers to engineers. In the USGS Geologic Division, scientists like Lucy Jones study and monitor all types of hazards such as volcanoes, floods and drought. Earthquake study is the largest program in this division, costing about $50 million annually. The USGS does such a good job that other government agencies give it about $300 million from their budgets for scientific work.

Earthquake study is of particular importance to Southern California, as we all were reminded a year ago. It not only gives us the latest news but provides the scientific underpinning for a wide range of quake safety efforts. It is indispensable.

The new Republican majority in Congress, however, does not see the USGS in quite the same way. For two years, Rep. John Kasich (R-Ohio) advocated and nearly succeeded in abolishing the USGS. Now Kasich is chairman of the House Budget Committee, with considerable power in determining which agencies will live or die. House Speaker Newt Gingrich says the agency represents unnecessary expense.

It’s obvious the USGS is in trouble as Republicans seek to cut programs to pay the $148-billion price tag of the GOP’s “contract with America.”

One person who has concerns about the possible abolishment of the USGS, including any funding reduction for earthquake research, is Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills), whose district includes quake-battered Sherman Oaks.

“If one finds an agency really doing its job, it’s foolish in the extreme to abolish it in an effort to save money at all costs,” Beilenson says.

“There would not be any monitoring of day-to-day earthquakes and studying the faults” if her school’s USGS-funded seismological work were abolished, Caltech seismologist Kate Hutton says. Hutton says the loss of these earthquake research funds would cripple efforts to locate hidden faults and do broad forecasting of quakes in this area.

The USGS has a one-of-a-kind worldwide seismic network that constantly monitors earthquakes, along with field offices in every state.

“Our research prepares everyone better for the next quake with forecasting, improved public safety information and knowledge from structural engineers,” says Don Kelly, chief public affairs officer for the USGS. “A great deal of our work in this areas is not performed by anyone else.”

Lucy Jones compares the USGS to the National Weather Service, which also warns about coming disasters.

“There’s a great deal we can do to make ourselves and our environment safer” from earthquakes, she says. “These measures are a result of how much we have learned about earthquakes since the government started funding such research nearly 20 years ago.

“The Northridge earthquake was the first direct urban hit since 1933 in Long Beach, which killed more than 150 people. More than half a million people were literally on top of this quake, yet we had less than 40 direct fatalities and just over 3,000 buildings destroyed. Government-funded earthquake studies have resulted in improved buildings and better information on protecting people from injury and death.”

There is a possibility that the USGS’s quake work would be transferred to another federal agency, which would save no money and is not guaranteed anyway. A spokesman for Kasich told me that the newly empowered Midwesterner is “willing to discuss” earthquakes with Southern California representatives, but has not promised to preserve any of the agency’s work.

Maybe understanding earthquakes doesn’t seem indispensable to a congressman from Ohio or Georgia, but it is to me. I want the elected officials who would jeopardize earthquake research funding to wake up just once at 4:30 a.m. to the dark terror of a rumbling earthquake, searching for a crying child down the hall.

“I’m not sure that people who haven’t personally gone through an earthquake can really understand what it’s like,” Jones says.

I agree. They can’t really understand. So my message to Gingrich and Co. is simple: Don’t fund your “contract with America” with programs important to the lives of Southern Californians. We all suffered enough last Jan. 17, and we want our future to be safer because of USGS earthquake research yet to be done.