The wine capital of California was literally shaken after an earthquake hit Napa Valley last Sunday, August 24. About $1 billion worth of property damages was estimated to have been lost.
While no one was seriously harmed, the people of Napa are calling for the government to setup an early warning system so they know what to do next time. Such system is not a new thing as there are already quake activity alert systems available like those in Japan and Mexico.
Democrat Dianne Feinstein, senior senator of California, agreed for the deployment of an earthquake system that would warn the people.
"Officials in Washington and along the West Coast should partner with the private sector to make an interoperable earthquake early-warning system a reality, and we should do so as soon as possible before a much larger earthquake strikes," Senator Feinstein said.
The 6.1 Magnitude Earthquake that hit Napa Valley, centered near Napa city, could have been detected and people warned earlier. Not that the state of California is lax about this, but last year, Gov. Jerry Brown already signed a bill pertaining to an early-warning system. Brown's Office of Emergency Services was given a couple of years to source funds and identify sponsors to raise $80 million. The money will be spent for the underground sensors that would make up the earthquake-warning system.
"This is sort of the last mile out of the 20-year effort for scientists that have been working on this for us to pull it all together," the Office of Emergency Services' director Mark Ghiladucci said.
The Seismological Lab's director Richard Allen, of the University of California, Berkeley, noted that his lab received a "10-second advance notice predicting a quake and warning of light" before last Sunday's earthquake. Allen and his team are currently testing the said quake warning system before it goes public.
A few seconds matter. An early warning could bring the people to a safe zone so injuries can be avoided. Or Napa business owners could have been warned, allowing them to move their expensive, high-end vintage wine bottles ahead of time.
Hundreds to thousands of wine bottles were broken and staffs of wineries are still cleaning up the remains. The worst damage in Napa though was those in the city's downtown including 12 wineries, two hotels, library, and a post office. Presently "red-tagged" or unsafe to enter are a total of 49 buildings in the area.
