Quake Readiness on Capitol Hill

When the Whittier Narrows earthquake hit in 1987, Rep. David Dreier found out from a colleague who had heard it on the news. Standing on the floor of the House at the time, Dreier said he felt helpless, out of touch, fearful of what was happening to his congressional district thousands of miles away.

Next time the earth shakes back home, the San Dimas Republican intends to be better prepared. If all goes as planned, he will be tipped off to the ground movement within minutes, even before newscasters rush onto the air. He will know the magnitude of the temblor and the location of the epicenter just after the crack seismologists at Caltech get the data.

Dreier is one of a handful of California congressmen whose offices have been outfitted with a cutting-edge earthquake alert system, the same one used by Southern California utilities, railroads and governments to stay on top of major shaking.

Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale) has also picked up the new gadget, saying he wants to know instantly if the ground is shaking back home.

Staffers for Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) said they will seek to get the system in their office. It costs about $1,000 to install the equipment, a bill that Caltech is picking up.

The quake monitor, a cooperative effort between Caltech and the U.S. Geological Survey, sends out the location and magnitude of the earthquake within minutes of the event, if no glitches occur.

It can be adjusted to pick up only major quakes or tuned to record virtually every shift of the ground. What strikes many users is how often it goes off.

“I never knew there were so many earthquakes in California,” said Bill Grady, an aide to Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-San Bernardino).

“We just had a staff meeting and it went off twice. It makes a little beeping sound and the computer screen starts flashing. That means somewhere in California an earthquake just occurred.”

The system uses 250 seismometers located throughout Southern California to gauge earth movements, transmitting the information to computers at Caltech 24 hours a day.

The computers process the information and forward the data to an Earth-orbiting satellite.

The earthquake specifics are then transmitted to the office computers on Capitol Hill--whether telephone lines are knocked out of commission or not.

“We don’t know yet how to predict earthquakes, so we think the next-best thing is to provide information as quickly as we can after an earthquake hits,” said Caltech seismologist Egill Hauksson. “This allows them to be as informed as we are here.”

But glitches do occur--sometimes big ones. The monitoring system, for instance, missed the Northridge earthquake, although it wasn’t being used in any congressional offices at the time.

“We didn’t do so well,” Hauksson admitted.

The Northridge quake was so powerful and widespread that seismic waves hit many instruments simultaneously, leading the computer to mistakenly believe that the waves were simply interference and not a real earthquake.

The experts at Caltech have tinkered with the technology since then and are replacing old analog instrumentation with more modern digital sensors.

Although it flubbed one of the biggest quakes to hit the area, the sensor performed well on the hundreds of aftershocks that continue to hit the region.

Caltech initially installed the device in 1994 in the office of Brown, then chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. Others subsequently heard about the technology and requested it for their offices as well.

Hooked up to the system earlier this year were Moorhead, Dreier, Rep. Esteban E. Torres (D-Pico Rivera), who helped his constituents recover from the Whittier temblor, and Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), whose district suffered damage in the 1992 Landers and Big Bear quakes.

“When a major earthquake hits Southern California, minutes matter,” said Lewis, who chairs the appropriations subcommittee overseeing the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“As an elected official with emergency response oversight, I’ll now have at my fingertips precise and readily available information . . . only minutes after it occurs.”

Technicians hope to update the system so that someday it does more than simply transmit the epicenter and magnitude, also indicating the distribution of shaking throughout the region.

Caltech has a proposal pending before FEMA to fund the effort.

Lawmakers see the monitor as an educational tool, for them and their office visitors.

“The value is not so much so George Brown can send congressional help,” said Grady, Brown’s administrative assistant. “The value is as a tool to show people how often California gets earthquakes.

It’s a billboard for everyone who visits this office on why there needs to be a federal role in earthquake research and why California ought to receive a federal earthquake research center.”

And next time a serious earthquake hits, these congressmen hope to learn of it within minutes--assuming that it strikes during office hours.

“With this we will know exactly where the quake is and how strong it is,” said Albert Jacquez, Torres’ chief of staff. “From a constituent-service point of view, we will know how to mobilize.”

Jacquez, who has the device linked to his computer, is still waiting for it to go off.

“I don’t want it to go off where it’s going to hurt people,” he said.

“I just want to see if it works.”