If you were in Japan on Friday chances are you would have seen this.
It’s Japan earthquake warning system that the government spent $1billion to build and includes a network of 1,000 GPS-based sensors spread out over the country.
Considering the devastation that followed it doesn’t sound actually sound all that alarming, but according to Alan Boyle at MSNBC it provided “enough time for people to switch off their gas lines and get beneath a table or a door frame.”
And was especially helpful to those in Tokyo who were 230 miles from the epicenter and therefore may have had an additional 80 seconds to prepare.Boyle says it is considered a model for the rest of the world and the basis for a system the U.S. is trying to develop for California.
Trying to develop in California. Trying!?! WTF?!?
Photos and video at the link.
Go watch the video at least through the end of the quake. It’s fascinating.
I’ve been through a few earthquakes–one on the Big Island of Hawaii, and a couple strong ones felt in NW Oregon (those two earthquakes occurred in Washington State). It definitely gets your adrenaline racing. Our house shook hard enough to toss onesleeping teen-ager off the sofa upstairs. Since we lived on the back side of a dike that held back the Columbia River, I must admit I was somewhat concerned about a sudden flood.
I don’t think the government should get involved in this kind of thing. The free market will take care of it.