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Japan starts providing quake early-alert service

by Staff Writers
Tokyo, Aug 1, 2006
Japan on Tuesday started providing a world-first earthquake early warning service, giving a few seconds notice to railways, power plants and other sensitive sites before the earth rumbles.

The system developed by Japan's Meteorological Agency detects the first underground tremors and estimates their intensity before big seismic waves reach the surface.

"The longest advance time the system can provide for evacuation will probably be about 20 seconds, but even that will be a rare case. In many cases warnings will be issued after big shakings reach the surface," said Makoto Saito, an official at the Meteorological Agency.

"But even if we can provide only a second before the waves arrive, it will be very helpful as people will know from the very beginning of weak tremors that could be followed by devastating huge waves," Saito said.

Forty-one organizations signed up for the service as of Monday, the Meteorological Agency said.

Due to the limitations of the alert system, the agency limited recipients to organizations familiar with earthquake management such as railway companies, power plants and construction sites that can automatically shut down operations.

The system had a trial run in August last year when an alert was sent 14 seconds before a major earthquake to an emergency center housed at an elementary school the northern city of Sendai.

The earthquake off Sendai's Pacific coast, which measured 7.2 on the Richter scale, injured around 60 people around Japan but miraculously did not kill anyone.

Japan has designed an infrastructure in hopes of withstanding earthquakes, as it is hit by 20 percent of the world's major tremors. A total of 6,434 were killed on January 17, 1995 when a 7.3 Richter-scale earthquake struck the western city of Kobe.

The country was rocked by a scandal that broke last year in which a cost-cutting architect allegedly falsified earthquake-resistance data for some 100 condominiums.

In the new system, the Meteorological Agency will send alerts when it picks up P waves, or primary waves, which travel at seven kilometers (four miles) a second.

They are faster than S waves, or shear waves, which move at four kilometers a second and can damage buildings.

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