[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EARTHQUAKE MITIGATION:
REAUTHORIZING THE NATIONAL
EARTHQUAKE HAZARDS REDUCTION PROGRAM
=======================================================================
FIELD HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 31, 2018
__________
Serial No. 115-62
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
_________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
30-325 PDF WASHINGTON : 2018
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
DANA ROHRABACHER, California ZOE LOFGREN, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
BILL POSEY, Florida AMI BERA, California
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
RANDY K. WEBER, Texas MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
STEPHEN KNIGHT, California DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia
BRIAN BABIN, Texas JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania
BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia JERRY McNERNEY, California
RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
GARY PALMER, Alabama PAUL TONKO, New York
DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida BILL FOSTER, Illinois
ANDY BIGGS, Arizona MARK TAKANO, California
ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii
NEAL P. DUNN, Florida CHARLIE CRIST, Florida
CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana
RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
DEBBIE LESKO, Arizona
C O N T E N T S
May 31, 2018
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.. 4
Written Statement............................................ 6
Statement by Representative Mark Takano, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 8
Written Statement............................................ 10
Statement by Representative Jerry McNerney, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 12
Written statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson,
Ranking Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
U.S. House of Representatives 13
Witnesses:
Dr. Steven McCabe, Director, National Earthquake Hazards
Reduction Program; Group Leader, Earthquake Engineering Group,
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Oral Statement............................................... 15
Written Statement............................................ 17
Dr. Stephen Hickman, Director, USGS Earthquake Science Center,
U.S. Geological Survey
Oral Statement............................................... 26
Written Statement............................................ 28
Dr. Frank Vernon, Research Geophysicist, Institute of Geophysics
and Planetary Physics, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC
San Diego
Oral Statement............................................... 35
Written Statement............................................ 38
Mr. Chris D. Poland, Consulting Engineer; NIST Community
Resilience Fellow
Oral Statement............................................... 46
Written Statement............................................ 49
Mr. Ryan Arba, Branch Chief, Earthquake and Tsunami Program,
California Governor's Office of Emergency Services
Oral Statement............................................... 61
Written Statement............................................ 63
Discussion....................................................... 70
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Dr. Stephen Hickman, Director, USGS Earthquake Science Center,
U.S. Geological Survey......................................... 92
Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record
Documents submitted by Representative Jerry McNerney, Committee
on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 94
EARTHQUAKE MITIGATION:
REAUTHORIZING THE
NATIONAL EARTHQUAKE HAZARDS
REDUCTION PROGRAM
----------
THURSDAY, MAY 31, 2018
House of Representatives,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 2:03 p.m., in the
Huntington Beach Civic Center, 2000 Main Street, Huntington
Beach, CA, Hon. Dana Rohrabacher presiding.
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Present: Representatives Rohrabacher, McNerney, and Takano.
Mr. Rohrabacher. The Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology will come to order.
Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the Committee at any time.
Good morning, and welcome to today's hearing entitled
``Earthquake Mitigation: Reauthorizing the National Earthquake
Hazards Reduction Program.''
I recognize myself for five minutes for an opening
statement.
Again, welcome to my colleagues to Huntington Beach. I am
very pleased that you both came today. It is my honor, of
course, to welcome you to Surf City, USA, but also the city
that, I might add, is the city where we built the first stage
of the Saturn rocket that took the first human beings to the
moon. We are very proud of our beach culture. We are very proud
of our aviation and our space achievements.
I am glad that two of my colleagues have been able to join
us today, Representative Mark Takano and Jerry McNerney. Both
have really been very active with me over the years, and
actually we have very positive personal relationships with each
other, and I think that demonstrates the type of cooperation
that we want to see in Congress and that is exemplified by the
Science Committee.
In California at any moment, we know that we could face a
really big earthquake, not just a little shaker but a big
earthquake. It is something that we can get complacent about
because it always seems to be in the future that it might
happen, and then when it doesn't we get complacent. Well, the
risk is very real.
According to the USGS, California has a 99 percent chance
of experiencing a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake over the
next 30 years. The likelihood of an even larger earthquake,
with a magnitude of 7.5 or greater, is 46 percent, and such an
earthquake would likely occur in the southern part of
California. So this is a major threat that we need to look at.
But California, of course, is not alone when it comes to
this. Close to 75 million people in 39 states face some risk of
an earthquake.
For 40 years the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction
Program--now I am going to have to be reminded--how do we
pronounce that? NEHRP. Okay, now I know how to say it. NEHRP
has supported efforts to assess and monitor earthquake hazards
and risks here in the United States.
Four Federal agencies coordinate their earthquake
activities under NEHRP: The U.S. Geological Survey, the
National Science Foundation, the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
These agencies assess U.S. earthquake hazards, deliver
notifications of seismic events, develop measures to reduce
earthquake hazards, and conduct research to help reduce the
overall U.S. vulnerability to earthquakes.
Congress had last reviewed and reauthorized this program in
2004, and that law expired in 2009. Although Congress
continues, however, to appropriate funds for this important
work, we are long overdue in reauthorizing this program. We
must ensure it is effective and up-to-date with the latest
knowledge and science for monitoring and mitigation of
earthquakes.
I am particularly interested in how we can improve the use
of data to advance the deployment of an effective earthquake
early warning system. I will be very interested in hearing if
that is even possible, and to what degree we could use this as
a goal. Such a system would automatically send an alert to
areas in danger of potential shaking after the earthquake has
been initially triggered. The alert would potentially allow
components of the lifeline infrastructure such as electric
utilities, railroad systems, and even hospital operating rooms,
to cease activity that could be impaired by violent shaking
before the first earthquake-triggered surface waves actually
reach them.
We know that Senators Dianne Feinstein and Lisa Murkowski
have introduced bipartisan legislation to reauthorize this
agency and this operation. They have that in the Senate, and I
will be working with my Science Committee colleagues to
introduce a bill in the House very soon for this
reauthorization.
I thank my witnesses for being here today, look forward to
your expert testimony.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rohrabacher follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher.Maybe we have an opening statement by Mr.
Takano--I mispronounce your name after I have been talking to
you for a decade now--Takano--there you go.
Mr. Takano. I want to welcome everyone to today's hearing.
I just want to make sure that the live stream is functioning. I
got some reports that it wasn't working on the Science
Committee website yet.
I want to welcome everyone to today's hearing to review the
nation's foremost earthquake research and risk mitigation
activities under the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction
Program, otherwise known as NEHRP. I look forward to our expert
panel's assessment of the program's strengths, weaknesses, and
challenges, and recommendations for improvements.
As an Inland Empire native, I am all too familiar with the
damage that can be caused by earthquakes. Just this month, the
Riverside area experienced a 4.5 earthquake followed by two
smaller earthquakes. While there were no reports of injuries or
damage, it reminds us that we need continued strong support of
our Federal earthquake risk mitigation activities.
Now, I am proud to recognize in the audience Dr. David
Oglesby--Dr. Oglesby is raising his hand in the back there, let
the record show that--and Dr. Christos Kyriakopoulos--now I
have a more difficult name than my name, Mr. Chairman--of the
University of California, Riverside. They are both in the
audience today, and they are from my district.
Set up on display way over at the back of the City Council
Chambers is a 3D printed representation of the fault lines in
the State of California that my university produced, and I have
a smaller version of it. People think that the faults are maybe
just one spine, but really you can see that it is a really
amazing amalgamation of faults. To know that here is L.A., here
is Huntington Beach, San Diego, and Riverside, you can see that
we are sitting on top of numerous faults that come together.
Mr. Chairman, I want to let you know that the University
has been so kind as to produce one of these for you and for
Representative McNerney, and I hope that we can get one to each
member of our delegation.
Mr. Rohrabacher. We will keep it on the wall, unless it
falls down in an earthquake.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Takano. But I think it will raise awareness of just how
much we need to keep our eye on the ball.
We struggle with how to encourage cities and regions in
high earthquake risk areas to implement mitigation measures,
but I have a feeling that these kinds of demonstrations might
help. We can't forget the importance of social and behavioral
aspects of earthquake risk mitigation. I encourage everyone to
take a look at the display, the big display, at the end of the
hearing.
Following the devastating earthquakes in Alaska and
California in 1964 and 1971, Congress established NEHRP and
tasked four agencies--the National Science Foundation, the U.S.
Geological Survey, the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
otherwise known as FEMA, and the National Institute of
Standards and Technology, otherwise known as NIST. NIST was
tasked as the lead agency--to reduce the risks to life and
property from future earthquakes. The good work of these
agencies and their public- and private-sector partners has
advanced the nation's understanding of earthquakes and provided
the science that supports seismic design guidelines and
standards for resilient buildings that save countless lives.
Unfortunately, economic damages are still very high after
extreme natural hazards, and it is important to invest in
community resilience. Resilient lifelines, such as roadways,
pipelines, power lines, and communications infrastructure, can
help get communities back up and running sooner after a big
earthquake. In fact, the National Institute of Building
Sciences recently released ``National Hazard Mitigation Saves:
2017 Interim Report.'' It is a document, and it found that for
every for $1 spent on hazard mitigation, the nation saves $6 in
disaster costs.
Though the West Coast is widely known for its earthquake
risk, the U.S. seismic hazard maps show that the central and
eastern parts of the nation, as well as Puerto Rico and the
U.S. Virgin Islands, are also categorized as having a high
probability for strong earthquakes. Two hundred years ago, the
New Madrid seismic zone in the middle of our country endured
three 7.0 or higher earthquakes. Further, the composition of
the earth under these regions allows the impact of an
earthquake to be felt at several times the distance as an
earthquake on the West Coast.
Now, while several countries in seismic prone areas have
had earthquake early warning systems for many years, the U.S.
continues to develop and implement pilot programs for a West
Coast early alert system. I look forward to hearing from the
panel today about what Congress can do to accelerate, and
eventually expand, deployment of this lifesaving technology
that can provide seconds to tens of seconds of time that could
stop surgeries, keep airplanes in the air, and shut down
nuclear power plants and other sensitive machinery. I also
believe it is important that we better understand the current
state of our infrastructure and buildings and how retrofitting
can mitigate both the loss of life and the cost of rebuilding
after an earthquake.
These issues are so very important to regions across the
nation, and I thank the panel for their testimony before this
Committee and as this Committee considers legislative
priorities for NEHRP authorization.
Thank you, and I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Takano follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you, Congressman Takano.
And now, Congressman McNerney.
Mr. McNerney. Well, I thank the Chairman, my friend from
Huntington Beach, for calling this hearing. I thank the
panelists for coming in, and I am looking forward to your
testimony.
My district is a little north of here. It is in the Delta
region of California. So we have the confluence of the San
Joaquin River and the Sacramento River forming the California
Delta. It has an extensive system of levies. Many are very
aged, so we are very concerned.
The Governor has a plan to put in tunnels, and we need to
understand what the seismic risks of that project may be.
But in all, we see damage when we have earthquakes, and it
is so important to have a set of very good standards that
mitigate or help us mitigate the damage. For example, we have
seen in other countries in the last century earthquakes of a
magnitude of 4 to 5 that have caused immense damage and
thousands upon thousands of deaths, whereas in this country we
have earthquakes on the order of a magnitude of 7 on the
Richter scale, and we have seen tragic damage, but nothing on
the scale that we have seen overseas.
So these standards are very, very important to the health
and safety and economic well-being of our communities and our
country. That is why NEHRP's mission is so important, and we
want to make sure that we understand what sort of objectives
are realistic with your mission, with NEHRP's mission, and how
we can obtain those objectives, how much it is going to cost,
and so on.
So I welcome your testimony, and I look forward to the back
and forth afterwards.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Ranking Member Eddie Bernice
Johnson:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you, Congressman McNerney.
This is a very serious issue today. This is very serious
because we know that this potential dangerous situation is
hanging right there. It could happen tomorrow, and it could
happen ten years from now or 100 years from now, but we know it
could happen tomorrow. We need to make sure we are prepared,
and I appreciate my two colleagues joining us today, and I
appreciate the witnesses that we have.
We have first-class witnesses to help us understand the
threat and how we should move forward, if there are ways to
move forward, to mitigate this challenge.
I will introduce the witnesses, and we will start.
The first witness today is Dr. Steven McCabe, Director of
the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. Let me note
that the leader of the Earthquake Engineering Group is also
there with NIST. Dr. McCabe has received both his Bachelor of
Science and Master of Science inmechanical engineering from
Colorado State University. He also earned a Ph.D. in civil
engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign.
Dr. Stephen Hickman, our second witness today, is Director
of the U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Science Center in
Menlo Park. Dr. Hickman received a bachelor degree in geology
from Earlham College, as well as a Ph.D. in solid Earth
geophysics from MIT.
And then Dr. Frank Vernon, our third witness today. He is a
Research Geophysicist at the Institute of Geophysics and
Planetary Physics at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at
the University of California at San Diego. Boy, that is a
mouthful.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Rohrabacher. He is also the Director for the USArray
Network Facility for the NSF EarthScope Program. Dr. Vernon
received a B.A. in physics from UC-San Diego, and a Ph.D. in
Earth science from Scripps Institute of Oceanography.
We also have with us Chris Poland, our fourth witness. He
is a consulting engineering and a NIST Community Resilience
Fellow. He previously served as Chairman of NEHRP on the NEHRP
Advisory Committee. Mr. Poland earned his Bachelor of Science
in mathematics from the University of Redlands and his Master
in Science in structural engineering from Stanford University.
Our final witness today is Mr. Ryan Arba, a Branch Chief of
the Earthquake and Tsunami Program in the California Governor's
Office of Emergency Services. He oversees the state's
preparedness efforts for seismic events. Mr. Arba received a
degree in social and behavioral sciences from Cal State
Monterey Bay, and a master's in public administration from the
University of Southern California.
I would suggest that if we keep it down to five minutes
apiece, we then will have a dialogue, which is what this
hearing was intended for.
So I now recognize Dr. McCabe for five minutes to present
his testimony.
TESTIMONY OF DR. STEVEN MCCABE, DIRECTOR,
NATIONAL EARTHQUAKE HAZARDS REDUCTION PROGRAM;
GROUP LEADER, EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING GROUP,
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY
Dr. McCabe. Thank you. Chairman Rohrabacher, Congressman
Takano, Congressman McNerney, I am Dr. Steven McCabe, the
Director of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program,
or NEHRP. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today to discuss NIST's role in reducing the earthquake risk
facing U.S. communities. NIST is the lead agency in the four-
agency partnership that is NEHRP. The Federal Emergency
Management Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the
U.S. Geological Survey are the other three partners.
Earthquake concerns are truly national in scope. Forty-two
states and a number of territories face serious risk from
earthquakes. The 1971 San Fernando earthquake caused serious
damage and was a motivating factor for the creation of NEHRP.
More recently, there have been significant increases in seismic
activity in southern Kansas and in Oklahoma. There are simply
no areas of the nation with zero risk from earthquakes.
Mitigation efforts through such efforts as improved
building codes can make a significant difference in saving
lives, which is the primary goal of earthquake-related
provisions in U.S. building codes and standards, the NEHRP
agency's work to perform needed research and to translate
research results into actions that mitigate the impact on the
nation. These include the development of national hazard models
and maps; disaster investigations concerning engineering,
geology, seismology, and social science aspects of an
earthquake; participation in the development of model building
codes and associated standards; and the funding of basic
research.
NIST carries out applied research to develop and deploy
advances in measurement science related to earthquake
engineering, including standards to enhance disaster resilience
of buildings, infrastructure, and communities. NIST research
has provided data to support improved codes and standards
through testing of structural elements, developed improved
modeling and assessment techniques for existing buildings, and
assess the impact of new materials in improving seismic
performance. NIST is actively collaborating with FEMA in
addressing non-ductile concrete building performance such as
that noted in the Los Angeles area concerning older buildings.
NSF funded initial work on this problem. In 2015, the City of
Los Angeles enacted ordinance 183893, which is a mandatory
retrofit program for soft first-story wood-frame buildings and
non-ductile concrete buildings. Seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones, on
loan from USGS and working with the City of Los Angeles, was a
key voice in this process. Thus, the enactment of this
important ordinance is a result of the activity of all four
NEHRP agencies in addressing this problem.
Preventing collapse so that occupants could safely leave
damaged buildings has been the goal inherent in building codes
since their inception in 1915. However, there has been a
growing call for expedited recovery from earthquake and other
natural hazard events. Significant economic interruptions due
to earthquake damage are no longer acceptable.
NIST has initiated a large effort to aggressively study the
engineering, social, economic, and policy issues concerning
making communities resilient. A community resilience planning
guide has been developed for us by local communities in
planning their own resilient future. NIST also has funded a
resilience center to provide tools for communities as they
forge a resilient future.
Improved building performance is another aspect of moving
towards resilience. A recent study completed by NIST considered
what would be required in terms of research and implementation
for adoption of an immediate occupancy performance objective
for building design. The concept is to improve building
performance to the point that occupants would be able to
quickly reoccupy business and residential buildings following a
natural hazard event.
NIST has worked with and looks forward to continuing to
work with the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
concerning reauthorization of NEHRP. Our challenge is to ensure
that new knowledge and experience gained through NEHRP
continues to be developed and applied to domestic practices and
policies that foster a more resilient nation. We must keep
working to mitigate the impacts of earthquakes on our
communities. NEHRP is an integral part of the private-public
collaboration that continues to reduce risk of damage to our
communities from seismic ground motions.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify on NEHRP,
and I am happy to answer any questions that you may have.
[The prepared statement of Dr. McCabe follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Dr. Hickman, you have five minutes.
TESTIMONY OF DR. STEPHEN HICKMAN, DIRECTOR,
USGS EARTHQUAKE SCIENCE CENTER,
U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
Dr. Hickman. Thank you, Congressman Rohrabacher and
colleagues, for inviting the U.S. Geological Survey to this
hearing. I am Steve Hickman, Director of the Earthquake Science
Center. Our center has been a flagship USGS research center in
the west for over 50 years. Here in Southern California, we
have had an office in Pasadena for over 40 years, working
closely with partners in Cal Tech and elsewhere.
The USGS is a committed partner in NEHRP. The agencies have
continued to work closely together since the appropriations
authority for NEHRP expired in 2009. NEHRP was founded on the
belief that while earthquakes are inevitable, there is much
that we can do as a nation to improve safety, reduce losses and
impacts, and increase our resilience.
Within NEHRP, each agency performs a distinct and
complementary role. The heart of this partnership is a shared
commitment to translate the results of research and monitoring
into actions that can reduce earthquake losses. The USGS role
within NEHRP is to deliver the scientific data and information
tools that engineers, emergency managers, government officials,
and the public need to prevent earthquake hazards from becoming
disasters.
USGS activities under NEHRP are implemented through the
Earthquake Hazards Program and the Global Seismographic
Network. We provide rapid, authoritative information on the
magnitude, location, shaking intensity, and potential impacts
of earthquakes both in the U.S. and around the world. The USGS
also develops national and regional hazard assessment maps and
detailed scenarios forecasting the impacts of anticipated major
earthquakes, and we carry out targeted research to improve
these products.
The USGS National Earthquake Information Center, which
supports this work, is a 24/7 operation providing situational
awareness for emergency responders and the public. This
information is made possible by the earthquake monitoring
networks that make up the Advanced National Seismic System,
including regional seismic networks that the USGS supports
through its academic partners.
Significant improvements to the ANSS were made in 2010 and
2011. In Fiscal Year 2018, we are continuing this effort by
directing $5 million for deferred maintenance and, according to
Congressional direction, $23 billion for build-out of the
Earthquake Early Warning System called ShakeAlert. Congress has
appropriated funds in recent years to continue development of
this system, and the USGS is committed to working with Congress
to determine the appropriate cost share for future ShakeAlert
developments. Our goal is not simply to duplicate the early
warning systems of other countries but to build the most
advanced earthquake warning system in the world.
USGS research is supplemented by external research through
grants and cooperative agreements. The Southern California
Earthquake Center at University of Southern California,
supported by the USGS and NSF, is an example of such a research
partnership. We have supported research projects in various
academic institutions across Southern California, including Cal
Tech, USC, UCLA, UC-Irvine, and UC-San Diego. In 2017, our
external research funding in the region amounted to $4.5
million.
All the best science, however, cannot guarantee that people
are able to use the information to make informed decisions.
Therefore, the USGS has supported publication of ``Putting Down
Roots in Earthquake Country,'' now available in eight different
regions and in five languages. These and other USGS
publications explain how residents can prepare for, survive,
and recover from earthquakes.
We have learned much about earthquakes in California, and
translated that knowledge into better building codes and better
emergency response plans. While many critical pieces of
infrastructure have been retrofitted to better withstand
earthquake shaking, other infrastructure has lagged. Many
seaports and some airports are built on land that is
susceptible to liquefaction where shaking causes the soil to
temporarily lose strength and cohesion and flow laterally,
behaving something like quicksand.
Lastly, I want to remind the Committee of the annual great
ShakeOut, which began in 2008 as part of a scenario of a great
earthquake on the southern San Andreas Fault. This year's
ShakeOut event happens in October on the 18th at 10:00 a.m. in
the morning. People around the country and the world will
participate in drills to practice safe responses to an
earthquake. Please encourage enlisting your offices in
participating at Shakeout.org.
In summary, the Department of the Interior supports
reauthorization of NEHRP because it has been a successful
interagency partnership that continues to make valuable
contributions to the nation's resilience to earthquakes and
other hazards.
On behalf of the USGS, thank you for this opportunity to
testify today.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Hickman follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Dr. Vernon?
TESTIMONY OF DR. FRANK VERNON,
RESEARCH GEOPHYSICIST,
INSTITUTE OF GEOPHYSICS AND PLANETARY PHYSICS,
SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY, UC SAN DIEGO
Dr. Vernon. Chairman Rohrabacher, Representative Takano,
and Representative McNerney, thank you for the opportunity to
discuss the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. My
name is Frank Vernon. I am the Director of the USArray Array
Network Facility, which is part of the EarthScope Program, and
I work at the UC-San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics.
I would also like to ask to have my written testimony
entered into the record as the formal record, please.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Without objection, and that will also be
true for our other witnesses as well.
Dr. Vernon. Most of my career has been focused on
developing distributed real-time sensor networks and autonomous
sensor networks in terrestrial and marine environments. In
1982, in partnership with the USGS, we deployed the first
digital seismic telemetry network in the U.S. on the San
Jacinto Fault down here, what is known as the ANZA network.
That network is funded by the USGS through NEHRP, through its
instantiation in 1982, and then funding for that continued
through 2014.
Another project that we have been working on is the
EarthScope/USArray, which is the primary thing. USArray is a
project that is the seismological component of the EarthScope
program at NSF. The core of the USArray project was known as
the transportable array comprised of 500 broadband seismic
stations deployed at a nominal 70-kilometer grid bounded by the
borders of the lower 48 states. Each station was deployed for
about two years, enrolled from a manner from the West Coast to
the East Coast starting in 2004 and completing in 2015.
After the TA completed work on the lower 48 in 2015, the
project was divided into two parts. Under NSF funding, funding
was secured to deploy approximately 280 stations in the State
of Alaska, and that project was then slated to continue through
2019 and 2020, depending on which of the stations you are
talking about.
Approximately 160 stations deployed in the TA have been
transitioned into the Eastern U.S. seismic network, which
started in 2014. CEUSN, as we call it, data streams have been
integrated into the Advanced National Seismic System, the ANSS,
and the operations are now being transitioned to USGS internal
operations.
In my opinion, it was a missed opportunity when USArray TA
was proposed that the USGS and NSF did not come up with a plan
to transition all the TA sites into the ANSS permanent
stations. If that had occurred, the 48 states would have
approximately a 1,600-station network with a nominal 70-
kilometer grid recording all earthquakes down to a magnitude
1.5 with completeness for the whole lower 48 states. With the
current deployment in Alaska, there is still opportunity to
decide to transition the TA stations into a permanent Alaska
seismic network, a key component of the ANSS.
Another component of the USArray program was funded through
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act leveraging the
existing permitting field program and telemetry to augment with
infrasound and meteorological sensors. This is something that I
think is very important. Those of us who are in the field side
of things do a lot of work dealing with permits, dealing with
access to sites, dealing with communications, dealing with
networking, and we should be leveraging this much more broadly
than we have historically been in the past.
For instance, the data that we put in these meteorological
sensors that have been used are now available to the National
Weather Service for incorporation into forecast models.
Overall, I think I would like to step back a bit and say
the NEHRP program has been extremely beneficial towards our
understanding of earthquakes and their related hazards. The
strengths of the program are the partnerships between academic
organizations, state agencies, and Federal NEHRP agencies,
which has been remarkable. Based on my experience of deploying
and operating seismic networks and field experiments under NSF
and USGS funding, as well as conducting research on these data,
I would like to make the following recommendations.
First is to keep a well-funded basic and applied research
NSF program in earthquake engineering, the properties of
earthquake sources, ground motion estimation, and other aspects
of earthquake faulting, which will be key to make advances to
understand the earthquake hazards and earthquake risks.
Second is to keep a sustainable Advanced National Seismic
System, including continuing support for the existing eleven
regional seismic network operators.
Next would be to support research at ANSS partner
facilities that improves their ability to deliver accurate
earthquake assessments and products. Each of these networks
that operate in each of these regions has a much more specific
knowledge where they are operating, whether it be Northern
California or Alaska or Washington, wherever these other
network operators are.
A thing that people might not think about is I think there
is an opportunity to think about how to improve the permitting
process of how we deploy these stations, because we have to
deal across multiple agencies, whether it is Agriculture or
Interior, and how do we set up a more standardized format
instead of having it be regionalized by each district or
national forest or national park, figure out a methodology to
make that more efficient and make less friction in the process.
I think shared resources between agencies should be
encouraged. For example, a seismic site is permitted and has
telemetry; why not add to this investment by adding more
sensors such as meteorological sensors that can be used by the
National Weather Service or another project I am involved with,
wildfire cameras in places that can provide information in
those situations.
I would recommend that the Alaska TA be integrated into the
Alaska Earthquake Center operations and into the ANSS, maybe
using some partnership with NASA and NOAA. There are some
opportunities there that might be useful because the data are
used for multiple agencies.
And finally, I would like to echo the recommendation of the
Scientific Earthquake Studies Advisory Committee in keeping
equal amounts of resources towards research as well as towards
the network operations.
In closing, I would like to thank the Committee for the
opportunity to testify on the review of the Federal National
Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program and say that hazard and
risk reduction is more important now than ever before
considering how much we have built up our environment.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Vernon follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much.
Mr. Poland?
TESTIMONY OF MR. CHRIS D. POLAND,
CONSULTING ENGINEER;
NIST COMMUNITY RESILIENCE FELLOW
Mr. Poland. Mr. Rohrabacher, Mr. Takano, and Mr. McNerney,
thank you very much for the opportunity to speak here today on
behalf of the American Society of Civil Engineers. My name is
Chris Poland. I am a licensed civil and structural engineer
with over 40 years of experience and professional practice in
structural engineering and earthquake engineering.
I am the NIST Community Resilience Fellow, and my testimony
today represents the interests also of the Earthquake
Engineering Research Institute.
NEHRP, now embodied in the public law, remains a solid
foundation for the continued advancement of seismic safety and
resilience for the nation. Over the past 40 years the program
has sponsored extensive research addressing all facets of
earthquake science and engineering. Its fundamental strength
rests in its longevity, continuous funding, and the cooperative
efforts of the four NEHRP agencies.
As both the leader within the NEHRP program and a consumer
of the information in my engineering practice, I can say
without reservation that the program is a success, fulfills a
critical need, and has made great strides in advancing the
science and engineering related to earthquakes.
For example, the NEHRP development of a technically complex
retrofit standard for existing buildings has reduced the cost
of implementing California's 30-year hospital retrofit program
by billions of dollars. The money is saved by the buildings
that don't need to be retrofit and the amount of retrofit that
needs to be done. It is a huge, huge contribution.
The nation continues to be significantly better prepared to
deal with the impact of strong earthquakes, and the program
needs to continue pursuing all of its activities.
Unfortunately, the program has not yet accomplished all
that was envisioned due to chronic underfunding of the four
NEHRP agencies. The program has also not been reauthorized
since 2004, and annual appropriations equal less than a third
of the needed $306.5 million annually recommended by the
National Research Council. Together, the lack of sufficient
funding and reauthorization have weakened the program's overall
effectiveness. This comes at a time when the nation's
earthquake risk continues to grow due to the population growth,
urban development, and deteriorating conditions of the built
environment.
What do you need to do? We need to provide more funding.
Since the last reauthorization, the focus of the earthquake
engineering has broadened from concentrating on design and
construction of individual buildings and infrastructure to also
include an assessment of what is needed to make communities
more resilient; that is, give them the ability to rapidly
recover from severe seismic shocks. This broadens the focus and
the challenges that NEHRP faces, and it needs to expand its
research programs in all areas.
Congress needs to signal their support and broaden NEHRP to
address community resilience and provide sufficient additional
authorization for funding in the following four areas.
First, identify the existing gaps in seismic safety and
community resilience through a nationwide risk assessment. A
fundamental assessment of the nation's earthquake risk
reduction will refine the direction the program is going,
stimulate collaborative efforts between the agencies, establish
the needed funding levels, and the need for additional
statutory responsibilities. This is important after 40 years to
really understand where we are today.
Second, develop community-based seismic hazard maps to find
potential for strong shaking, faulting, landslides, and
liquefaction on a block by block community scale. These are
micro maps that we need. These maps are needed immediately,
will require significant new scientific research, and are best
developed at a national level by USGS to assure consistency and
use of latest scientific findings. We have to have this block
by block information to overlay with all the other information
communities have so they can understand what their needs are
for community resilience.
Third, complete the Advanced National Seismic System
Monitoring Network for recording earthquakes and issuing early
warnings throughout the nation. All earthquake professions use
information derived from the seismic monitoring, and the
emergency management community will eventually use early
warning to save lives, reduce damage, economic disruption and
business downtime, and to reduce psychological trauma.
Monitoring provides information that we all use, and it is
extremely important. When we don't complete the ANSS program,
we deny ourselves the opportunity to learn from the earthquakes
as they occur. Earthquake warning is an extremely exciting
opportunity. It comes with the ability to gather all this
information that we need from earthquakes. It needs to be
completed, and not in 20 years.
Development of a new generation of seismic standards for
new and existing construction of buildings and lifeline
infrastructure systems is the fourth key aspect. FEMA initiated
the development of a functional recovery-based design and
planning code from within a reauthorized NEHRP. It should be
based on the work of a committee of experts who will set the
appropriate hazard levels and performance goals for all
buildings and lifeline infrastructure systems consistent with
the Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and
Infrastructure Systems published by NIST in May of 2016. A
rating system for easily identifying and publishing the
anticipated seismic performance of individual buildings should
also be developed and implemented.
It is a new generation code that we need, and it takes a
fresh start to get there. Fortunately, the current bipartisan
Senate bill, S. 1768, the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction
Program Reauthorization Act, includes these critical additions
to NEHRP.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to share my views
with the Committee from the trenches, if you will, down where
the people are, where the buildings are. Regarding NEHRP, I
urge Congress to move quickly to reauthorize this critical
program with these outlined improvements, and I am happy to
answer any questions that you have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Poland follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Mr. Poland.
Now, Mr. Arba, you are recognized.
TESTIMONY OF MR. RYAN ARBA,
BRANCH CHIEF, EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI PROGRAM,
CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR'S OFFICE OF EMERGENCY SERVICES
Mr. Arba. Thank you, and good afternoon, Committee Members.
I am Ryan Arba, the Branch Chief for the California Governor's
Office Emergency Services Earthquake and Tsunami Program. Thank
you for the opportunity to testify today.
California is vulnerable to a catastrophic disaster within
the lifetimes of most residents, and earthquakes is one of
those main threats. In fact, California holds 77 percent of the
annualized earthquake risk, and that is estimated at over $3
billion a year in risk over a 30-year period. And in more than
70 percent of the states, 40 million people reside within 30
miles of a known damaging fault.
We have kept some statistics of the earthquake impact since
1950 and found that there have been over 200 deaths related to
earthquakes, 19,000 injuries, and over $8 billion in Cal OES
disaster costs with FEMA, of course.
So CAL OES' responsibility includes leading California's
efforts to prepare, mitigate, respond, and recover from
earthquakes, but we can't do it alone. The program relies on
non-profit, local, state, and Federal partners such as the
Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Geological
Survey in order to meet this mission.
Today there are several programs I would like to highlight
that are supported in part by the NEHRP to the program
administered by FEMA.
The first is the annual ShakeOut event. It is most commonly
known as the one-minute drill to practice drop, cover, and hold
on, but also includes other opportunities to practice full-
scale disaster preparedness exercises and other preparedness
activities. It is one of our most leveraged activities. In
fact, we have over 10 million residents that are registered to
participate in this annual event every year, and the program
has expanded to include 52 million participants worldwide. In
fact, it has been copied in over 60 countries.
Another thing CAL OES does is we have three seismic
catastrophic plans focused on the Cascadia Subduction Zone,
which covers the northern three counties of California and goes
up through Oregon and Washington. We also have catastrophic
earthquake plans for the Bay Area and Southern California.
The work done through NEHRP to develop risk assessments for
the state, done by our partners at the U.S. Geological Survey,
as well as the California Geological Survey, are supported
through NEHRP, and it is that critical component of knowing
what the risk is which allows our emergency managers to prepare
for that eventual day when the earthquake strikes and we need
to respond immediately.
Most recently, the Haywired scenario was released, which
was a hypothetical magnitude 7.0 in the Bay Area on the Hayward
Fault at approximately 4:20 in the afternoon. The information
that is being drawn from this scenario helps emergency managers
not only look at the impact to human life and basic
infrastructure, but also look at many of our intertwined
infrastructure facilities such as utilities, and also takes a
look at the impact it would have on Silicon Valley, which not
only has a great impact in the Bay Area but also the world.
Finally, California is investing heavily in earthquake
early warning, a topic that I have heard mentioned previously
today, which can provide seconds to tens of seconds of advanced
warning. In particular, the NEHRP program, through FEMA, were
funding some research in order to come up with a common tone
and alert message so we can ensure that when those earthquake
early warning alerts come out, that people are taking the
appropriate protective actions to reduce our risk in the state.
So reauthorizing NEHRP is critical to ensure that
California and the nation are ready for the next damaging
earthquake, and I urge the Committee to consider the following
recommendations.
First, reauthorize NEHRP with an emphasis on implementation
by state emergency management agencies. One way to increase
that would be through state emergency management representation
on the NEHRP Advisory Committee on Earthquake Hazard Reduction.
Also, I would urge the Committee to consider expanding the
research category known as applied research, which would allow
emergency management agencies and social scientists to evaluate
the effectiveness of protective action campaigns, for example,
and adjust as necessary over time.
So, in conclusion, California is at great risk for a large
damaging earthquake likely to impact a large percentage of our
population, and NEHRP is a critical component of California's
earthquake mitigation strategy.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Arba follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much for your testimony,
and thank you for the testimony of all of our witnesses.
I will assume the first responsibility of having five
minutes to ask you some questions and have a little dialogue
here.
Mr. McNerney. Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question first?
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes.
Mr. McNerney. Are we expecting more than one round of
questions?
Mr. Rohrabacher. You know what? If we have time, we will do
exactly that. We do have to be out of here at four o'clock? So
we have an hour, and we will use that time, if you so choose.
It is my time, but my time is running out now.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Rohrabacher. Listen, I want to get a little better
understanding on the record here of the type of threat, of the
magnitude of the threat that ordinary people in our area and
our state are facing.
I noted that the statistics were that if there is a 6.7
earthquake, there is a 99 percent chance of having one of these
in the next 30 years. What is a 6.7 earthquake? When San
Francisco was leveled, what magnitude earthquake was that, et
cetera? Does anyone want to tell me? Go ahead.
Dr. Hickman. I will start with that. So, the 6.7 earthquake
is the equivalent magnitude to the Northridge earthquake which
occurred in the L.A. Basin in 1994 and caused a great deal of
damage, tens of billions of dollars of damage. The reason that
the 6.7 threshold is used is because that represents the kind
of damage done by a Northridge-type earthquake, either in the
L.A. Basin or in San Francisco.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. And what about it says also
that we have almost a 50/50 chance to have a 7.5 earthquake.
How much greater is 7.5 than 6.7?
Dr. Hickman. It is a lot greater, of course. It is greater
in terms of ground motions and damage, and also in terms of
extent, because a large earthquake like that essentially unzips
a longer piece of the fault. So the more fault you unzip,
essentially, in an earthquake, the more area is impacted.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Let me ask you something specific on that.
We know that there was some freeway damage when we had the
Northridge earthquake. I remember that very well. But for a 7.5
earthquake, which is a 50/50 chance, or so we have been told,
would the freeways remain operative? Would our water systems
remain operative? Would our airports remain operative? And how
about the electric system? Would those fundamentals for our
society to function, would they be taken out of service by
this?
Dr. Hickman. It may be a question for someone else on the
panel?
Mr. Rohrabacher. Mr. Poland has an answer to that. Go right
ahead.
Mr. Poland. Let me speak generally about that. A magnitude
6.7 earthquake, like the Northridge earthquake, causes a
significant amount of damage. It will not cause a lot of
building collapses, even with the most vulnerable kinds of
construction that we have. It causes a considerable amount of
disruption depending on the area that it is in. A community may
be able to recover fairly well depending on if they have all
the resources that they need.
Mr. Rohrabacher. What about the 7.5?
Mr. Poland. The 7.5 earthquake is a different animal. It is
extremely large. It is at the level that we are designing
buildings and transportation systems for. It is not the largest
that we expect, but it is at the level that we are designing
for. Right now, our building codes are basically designing the
buildings and systems to be safe. That means that people are
going to be able to be safe if they are inside and get out and
be out until the buildings are repaired.
Now, that takes care of the buildings that have been built
since about 1980 or 1985. Buildings that were built before 1980
or 1985, about 50 percent of them are not going to be usable.
They are probably going to need to be replaced. Ten to 15
percent are going to collapse and kill people. This is at
magnitude 7.5. All the research that we do and all the work
that we do helps us understand how to fix that problem, but the
problem sits with the existing buildings and infrastructure
systems, and money is needed to rebuild those things.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Let me go down the list. Will the freeways
stay up?
Mr. Poland. The freeways in California will likely stay up
because since 1971 we have been working on our freeways.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. What about the electric system?
Mr. Poland. Depending on the electric provider, the
electric providers have been working on that. I can't speak
expertly about that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. What about water systems?
Mr. Poland. Water systems are highly vulnerable because
they are dispersed across a large area. They cross liquefaction
areas, they cross fault zones, they cross landslide zones, and
all those things have really not been taken into account in the
design.
Mr. Rohrabacher. We get the message. How about the
airports?
Airports, it depends on where they are. It depends on
whether they are sitting on landfill and they are going to be
subject to liquefaction or not.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. Well, a 7.5, that is 50/50. The
next 30 years we have a 50/50 chance of that magnitude of an
earthquake. What is the possibility that we might have
something even more damaging than that, even greater than that?
Mr. Poland. The way structural engineers talk about this--
and this is one of the issues we have about getting everybody
to collaborate, because we need to talk the same language. The
community resilience work will give us that. But structural
engineers design their buildings with basically a 500-year
return earthquake, return event, and a 2,500-year event is the
larger event that we are expecting, and it can be up to 50
percent stronger. As was said here, it covers a larger area.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Am I taking too much time? Yes, we will
have another round.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Rohrabacher. Mr. Takano?
Mr. Takano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to spend a little time on building codes.
Mr. Poland and Dr. McCabe, the National Institute of
Building Sciences recently released its 2017 interim report
which found that for every $1 spent on hazard mitigation, the
nation saves $6 in disaster costs. What impact should this
report's finding have on earthquake mitigation investments?
Dr. McCabe. I think the answer is that NEHRP needs to be
reauthorized, very clearly, and that we need to continue the
work. Having buildings and infrastructure that perform well and
don't require significant clean-up and rebuilding is central to
keeping people in their homes, keeping the economy functioning,
and minimizing disruption. The earlier study by NIBS, the
number was about $4. So the numbers are self-explanatory.
Investing in mitigation pays off. If you invest in improving
your building performance for an earthquake if you are in areas
where high winds may be expected, it will likely do better with
that. A water system that is improved in terms of its
earthquake performance likely will be more reliable just in
normal service.
So the investments pay off over time, and in an area in
Washington, DC. where there are significant issues with the
water supply, as in other areas of the country where there are
older systems, these newer systems perform substantially
better. So investing is an important tactic in keeping the
economic health of the country and to avoid having significant
disruptions that cause resilience problems.
Mr. Takano. Thank you so much for that answer. And we are
talking specifically about building codes.
Dr. McCabe. Yes.
Mr. Takano. We are talking about examining building codes
going forward --
Dr. McCabe. Yes.
Mr. Takano.--so that all future construction conforms to
adequate building codes. And to look at retrofitting existing
buildings, or rebuilding them completely.
Dr. McCabe. Yes.
Mr. Takano. Mr. Poland, do you want to respond?
Mr. Poland. I would like to add to what Dr. McCabe said
with regard to existing buildings. We don't need all of the
buildings in the built environment to be able to be used
immediately after an earthquake. It is not necessary. There are
certain types of buildings that we need within a few hours--
hospitals, police stations. Those sorts of things have to be
available to manage the response and take care of the injured.
Another set of buildings where people live in their
neighborhoods, those need to come back to life, but we have two
or three weeks to get that to happen. We have time to do some
repair work. The basic economic engine of a community and its
business environment and all of that, there is more time
available to do that. We have to get the workforce taken care
of first.
The reason I say that is because when we look into the
existing building environment, we can design and retrofit those
buildings to different levels, and this is what performance-
based engineering allows us to do. This is what setting the
performance goals that the community resilience guide from this
talks about. When we go about doing that, the new generation of
code will recognize what needs to be done so our communities
can take the resources that they have and apply them to the
areas that are most needed as they plan their recovery process.
Mr. Takano. I get what you are saying about sort of
triaging --
Mr. Poland. Yes.
Mr. Takano.--prioritizing what buildings we must make sure
are resilient. What about multi-family or dense residential
buildings? I understand that in many parts of California there
is a social justice concern about poorer people, lower-income
people occupying buildings that may be less earthquake
resilient. What thoughts do you have, either of you, on this
topic?
Mr. Poland. Well, let me just say first, and then anybody
can talk about that, in my mind the key issue is to be able to
maintain your workforce. This is something that was very
important in San Francisco as I worked on their program. You
need people to stay in the city, to be able to get back in
their homes and get back to their life so they can go back to
work. If they don't, they leave. And if they go someplace else,
you can't restore your economy. So that is the key aspect.
Now, when you go to recognizing where the key
vulnerabilities are, you are going to find that the folks that
are economically disadvantaged, the folks that you are talking
about, are the ones that are living in the most dangerous
buildings, and they have the least ability to help pay for
that. So the issue is how do we make sure--and we need those
people for the workforce. How do we make sure that the retrofit
work can be done and be paid for? Because as part of the
community obligation to protect their workforce, that has to be
taken care of.
Mr. Takano. My time is running out. It has elapsed, the
Chairman has kindly showed me.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Takano. I have no time to explore this further, so I
will yield to my colleague, yield back to the Chairman.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you.
Mr. McNerney?
Mr. McNerney. I thank the Chairman, and I thank the panel.
I think your testimony has been very informative so far.
As we have seen with recent natural hazards, it is clearly
imperative for lifelines such as utility lines, water systems,
transportation systems, to withstand hazards and to be back
online as soon as possible, and that strong standards are a
very important part of making sure that that is the case.
So my question is this for Mr. Poland, if you can answer
it: Are there any codes that apply to underground water
conveyance tunnels?
Mr. Poland. When you think about codes, most of us often
think about building codes. It is a building department. It is
a set of rules that you have to go by to get your permit. When
you go to the infrastructure systems and water systems, there
is no building department. There are various agencies that
regulate the design and construction, but most of the time
water infrastructure providers set their own standards for what
they are going to design to be based on what they perceive is
necessary for their community, what they believe they can
afford to do within the rate structures that they have to live
with, and what their community is saying is important to them.
What we have learned--and this is published--is that our
infrastructure systems are designed to a very uneven level of
performance and safety. In fact, they are mostly designed for
day-to-day operations, for normal conditions, with very little
regard to the high-consequence, low-probability events like
earthquakes.
Mr. McNerney. Well, what I hear you saying is that there
really aren't any codes, standard codes really, that are used
in those.
Mr. Poland. Correct.
Mr. McNerney. So would it be safe to say that the large
water conveyance tunnel plan, the Governor's plan, is not
resting on sound geoscience to prevent significant risk?
Mr. Poland. No, I wouldn't say that. One of the nice things
is, I believe, when you have a project like that, the kind of
effort that goes into it in recognition of what the hazards
are, that special studies are done, and I assume that these
have been done and that the protection is going to be in place.
I would not draw that conclusion from what I just said.
Most water districts in communities are small. They serve a
small area. They are localized, and they are subject to the
kind of discussion that I just made.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you. That is a question that is very
important to me in my district, how safe are those plans, and
recent studies I have heard and testimony that was taking place
in San Joaquin County showed that there wasn't a set of
standards that would be reliable in terms of designing large
tunnels for big advanced projects that cross a large region of
space.
Mr. Poland. And I don't want to disagree with that. I don't
want you to interpret my comments as disagreeing. Those
standards are particular to that particular type of
construction. I am not familiar with those at all. But I would
like to believe that because of the dependence on that water by
people downstream, by people in Southern California and the
Central Valley, that we are not going to be able to overlook
the consequences of a major earthquake. That has to be built
into the system.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you.
The USGS produces and updates, Mr. Poland, national seismic
hazard maps. How would developing community seismic standard
maps help communities across the nation prepare for earthquake
risk?
Mr. Poland. What we have now from USGS, which is extremely
helpful, is an ability for every location within a city to
determine what the strong motion is, and they can produce maps
for us that show us the contours across a city. That is great
for the shaking level, how hard it shakes.
We don't have those kinds of maps universally for areas
that are subject to liquefaction, and when you talk about
utility systems, and your utility system is brought out across
your whole community, you have to know where your liquefaction
is going to occur if you want to understand what is going to
happen to your utility systems.
The same thing with faulting and landsliding. There are
targeted areas, very dense urban areas where some of this
information is available, but it really needs to be available
for any community that wants to understand their resilience.
Mr. McNerney. Has my time expired? Oh, another minute? Oh,
boy, I am going to use it.
Mr. Poland, you mentioned that there is chronic
underfunding of developing standards and for the United States.
How do we compare, in terms of having standards, to other
countries around the world? I mean, are we behind? Are we
ahead? Are we in the middle of the pack? How do we stand?
Mr. Poland. It depends on which areas. In Third World
countries, they don't have any standards. In countries
comparable to ours, there are a wide variety of standards. I
have never done a study myself to compare those. I know there
are international forums where we get together and we talk
about each other's standards.
I think the most important part is it is not how we compare
to our neighbors. It really depends on how is our built
environment going to perform, and is it going to meet our
expectations or is it going to surprise us and we are going to
be caught with a built environment that is not going to serve
us very well?
Mr. McNerney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. How do we compare in terms of the danger
that we face as compared to other countries? I mean, I remember
reading accounts of St. Sebastian in Spain, that they had a
huge earthquake there. Is Europe still--where do they compare
to us? Where do we compare to other countries? Japan seems to
be going through a number of earthquakes. So the risk to our
country compared to other countries, where would you put it?
Dr. McCabe. It depends on where you are. If you are along
the Ring of Fire, Japan and New Zealand in particular have
significant risk, all the way up the West Coast of the
Americas. That is all part of that Pacific plate juncture.
Interestingly, in Chile, their building codes are based on U.S.
building codes in large part, and they have had significant
strong shaking down there, and their buildings have done quite
well. The latest one was in 2010. So we have anecdotal
information from actual application of our building codes, but
it is a significant risk.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So this Ring of Fire that we are talking
about, does that mean that all the countries that are around
that edge of the Pacific are at the maximum risk in the world
of having quakes?
Dr. McCabe. I will defer to my seismology colleague here.
Dr. Hickman. The Ring of Fire countries obviously have a
lot of risk.
Mr. Rohrabacher. You have to talk into your mic, please.
Dr. Hickman. The Ring of Fire countries obviously have a
lot of risk, and we share information with those countries. For
example, we learn about how to model or understand reductions
in earthquake damage by looking at Chile or Japan. However, if
you look at other countries, like India, for example, and also
Iran and Iraq, Italy, they face a great deal of hazard from
smaller costs, not as dramatic as the Ring of Fire.
But at the end of the day, a lot of countries suffer
because their building codes are not as good as ours, and their
enforcement of their building codes, if they have them, are not
as good as ours, and that was mentioned earlier. The same
earthquake that makes for good building codes like ours will do
a lot less damage than in countries without those building
codes. So the risk is spread around the country.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I understand. That is a good point, and it
has been made today, and we hear that. We really need to make
sure that--you can't stop the earthquake, but we can be
prepared for it. Thank you. I am a Boy Scout. ``Be Prepared''
is the motto of the Boy Scouts, right?
But let me ask you this. In terms of actually understanding
the threat, I would like to ask you a little bit about
prediction and warnings. Does it make sense for us to have
sensors in space, satellite sensors? For example, this
Committee oversees that type of activity, sensors that might be
able to determine pressure building or smaller movements of the
earth. Does it make sense for us to be doing that?
Dr. Hickman. Monitoring from space does play an extremely
important role in keeping track of the deformation of the
earth; for example, radar images taken from satellites. That is
very important for mapping out hazards, where the faults are
being loaded most rapidly when an earthquake occurs, how does
the crust respond. But we really cannot do short-term
prediction from this. We can't do short-term prediction at all.
We thought it was easier before. And by ``short-term'' I mean
predicting that there is going to be an earthquake of a
particular size in a particular place tomorrow or the week
after.
We used to be more optimistic about that. We now know that
earthquakes are much more complicated than that. Earthquakes
basically start small. Some of them decide to grow big, but
most of them stay small. The ones that become big, they start
very deep. So it is very hard to see the signals associated
with the initiation of an earthquake close enough to tell
whether you could even predict an earthquake at all at that
level.
Mr. Rohrabacher. We end up predicting an earthquake to say
within the next five days there will be an earthquake, so they
come back on the 6th day, and then you have the earthquake on
the 10th day. I think we are facing that kind of thing. So what
our efforts should be, instead of providing warning, we should
focus on what comes next to make sure that, number one,
beforehand we are prepared; number two, what do we do after the
earthquake has come to mitigate that.
Dr. Hickman. This is exactly where early warning comes in.
Early warning is not early warning for the earthquake. It is
early warning of shaking from an earthquake that has already
started. So once the earthquake starts, you don't have to
predict it anymore. You just need to have sensors very close to
the starting point. If you can pick that vibration up, you can
see how big the earthquake was, how much shaking there is going
to be, and you broadcast that out as fast as you can.
The emphasis is shifting, of course, away from earthquake
prediction, because that is not going to save lives and
property. But warning about shaking from an earthquake that
already has started will, as well as increasing the strength of
the built environment.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. My time is up again.
Mr. Takano?
Mr. Takano. Well, Mr. Chairman, I am confident we are going
to get through all these questions because we are taking turns
and playing nice.
Mr. Poland, I just want to continue my question where I
left off with what you were saying. It was interesting to me
what you were saying, that we have to focus in the aftermath of
a major earthquake on preserving our workforce because that is
going to be key to rebuilding, and a large part of our
workforce is going to be coming from the lower-income folks who
are going to do the rebuilding, and a lot of these low-income
people live in our most vulnerable areas.
I recall from this latest earthquake in Mexico City that we
saw the tall buildings actually did okay, but it was these mid-
size buildings that didn't do so well. Can you maybe describe
what the risks are in these low-income areas and maybe paint
that picture more fully for us?
Mr. Poland. I think the experience that we saw in Mexico
City had more to do with the time that the buildings were built
and the quality of the construction that went into building the
buildings. It didn't really have as much to do with the height
or not, so just to say that.
We do know that there are classes of buildings that are
extremely vulnerable, unreinforced masonry buildings, the wood-
frame buildings with soffer stories. We call them the soffer
story buildings. There is an opening at the bottom, so there is
a real weakness down there, and the older concrete buildings
that don't have sheer walls.
When you walked into this building, you probably noticed
the diagonal braces on this building. Those braces were put in
there to supplement the strength of this building because it
was an older concrete building that didn't have enough strength
to be able to resist the lateral loads. So they put braces in
to hold the building up so it would be able to perform. That is
good.
The point that I want to make is that the older buildings
that we have, because they are older, don't have the features,
don't have the same quality, and so they tend to be the ones
that tend to be more affordable for folks to be able to live
in, and those are the buildings that are the most vulnerable
buildings.
Now, in order to correct that, and where the NEHRP program
comes in, is there is a huge amount of research and activity
that needs to go into understanding about just how much we need
to fix the buildings. An engineer given a task will solve it. I
might spend three times as much money as I need to, but I am
not sure because I don't have all the information that I need.
So we do the research, we figure out the programs, we do the
testing, and I can identify through analysis what actually
needs to be done. The less I have to spend on each building,
when a community looks at this, the more buildings we can fix.
Mr. Takano. Mr. Poland, so we don't want to over-spend,
right? I wish we had an economist who was also here with us,
because part of this problem we have, this conundrum, is the
cost of retrofitting, or the cost of just rebuilding if we
think that retrofitting is not enough.
Was it you, Dr. McCabe, who was talking about a block by
block analysis, or was that somebody else? You were talking
about block by block, right? That seems awfully tedious, but is
that something that we can do, and is that something that is
worth the money? Tell me more about that.
Mr. Poland. Well, I think it is worth the money. We can't
go block by block and do the kind of detailed evaluation by the
design professionals that I am accustomed to doing for my
projects. You are right, that is way too much. But let's start
with the ground shaking and liquefaction potential.
As the science develops and the understanding of what is
going on underneath the ground--I am talking like a structural
engineer now, what is going on down there, what the
vulnerabilities are--that information can be extrapolated, and
we can get much better information block by block if the
science is improved so that we can understand. USGS needs to do
the research to sort that out.
As NIST and Steve McCabe's group does their research and
looks at building performance, we can recognize classes of
buildings. Right now we categorize 15 different classes of
buildings, and our procedures are all built around those
things. As we understand how those buildings perform, then all
we have to do is identify in a community what class that
building is, and it gives us a good measure about how it is
going to perform, so then we can understand where the
mitigation needs to be done.
So over on the science and research development side
providing new information to allow us to extrapolate to our
inventories of buildings so that we can officially figure out
what needs to be done.
Mr. Takano. Do you have any idea whether the current
compromise in the Senate legislation is including resources for
this kind of research or not? How much more would it cost us to
do this?
Mr. Poland. The National Research Council in 2011, at the
request of NIST, did a study about what we needed to spend in
the NEHRP program over a 20-year period. I mentioned this in my
testimony. They came back and said we need to spend $306
million a year for 20 years, and they gave us 18 different line
items of things we needed to do and a whole book full of
explanation about what needed to be done in order to achieve
what I am talking about.
So my answer to you is we need $300 million. I believe the
Senate version has $80 million in it, or $90 million.
Mr. Takano. My time is up. It is not just by coincidence
that we are talking about increased need for money. The
Chairman, I just put that in front of him. It just happened to
be at the same time.
I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Mr. McNerney.
Mr. McNerney. I thank the Chairman again.
I am going to follow up on your question.
Mr. Poland, on the block by block analysis, wouldn't it
tend to be, getting in its own way--I mean, if there is so much
data, if there was a big hazard, wouldn't that kind of
information be just so massive and so inaccessible that it
wouldn't be useful; in fact, maybe even cause problems? Do you
envision something like that as well?
Mr. Poland. No, I don't. Let me give you an example. In San
Francisco--you probably heard about this--they put in place a
program to retrofit their soffer story buildings. The
recommendation was made, because San Francisco is bound on
three sides by water, that if they didn't do something to keep
their people in town, to shelter in place, if you will, that
they would leave, and they would never get them back. The
recommendation was that 95 percent of the people need to
shelter in place.
They came back and did some studies and found out that we
were at about 50 percent, and we needed to get to 95 percent.
We could get 25 percent more people sheltering in place if we
strengthened the soffer story buildings. So that program was
put in place.
Now, as we started to work through the details of was it
really going to accomplish what it needed to accomplish, it
became really important to understand how the shaking was going
to vary across the city, where the liquefaction was going to
occur, where there was landslides, because a building in a
landslide area, there is really not much we can do to it
economically to make it shelter-in-place capable. If it is in a
liquefaction area, it is the same thing.
So having the block by block information to answer a
specific question--how many of those 6,500 buildings are in
areas that we can't fix, how many can we fix--is what I am
talking about that we need the information block by block.
Mr. McNerney. All right. Thank you.
Dr. McCabe, you mentioned that you want to prevent a
building from collapsing, an important part of the standard,
but also a building having survivability so that it can be
reoccupied and reused quickly. Where are we with regard to
those kinds of standards that allow a building to be reused
after an event?
Dr. McCabe. Well, with an existing building that has been
built to an older standard, a 1950s-era standard, the level of
performance is going to be less than a newer building, right?
It is a function of the age of the building, the type of the
building, the level of the shaking certainly, the ground that
it is on. A new building properly designed and competently done
is going to probably do pretty well, except under great
earthquake-level shaking.
Mr. McNerney. So, for example, that new building they are
putting up in San Francisco, it is taller than anything else by
quite a bit, you would think that would be not only survivable
but would survive intact and allow people to use it the next
day?
Dr. McCabe. I wouldn't say that.
Mr. McNerney. Well, the next day is a little bit --
Dr. McCabe. Yes. I mean, what the conversation is evolving
to is not necessarily a life safety, get out of the building,
pat yourself on the back, and you may have to demolish the
building question, which is what it was maybe when NEHRP was
enacted. We have gotten things refined. We have gotten things
improved. The ground motion information, the hazard modeling is
improved. We have done a significant improvement in our ability
to design new buildings.
What we are doing, though, is we are evolving the
conversation. Chris Poland is talking about shelter in place,
keeping people in their communities, keeping the communities
able to continue to function. That is an essential part of this
whole conversation. We have met an initial goal here, and we
are moving beyond that, and we have done this on our own
because it is an important thing to do. We want to keep
communities viable. We may not be able to get a building
reoccupied immediately, a hospital, a fire station, something
like that certainly. There may be more time required. But as we
get better, we ought to be able to shorten those times as well.
That is where this immediate occupancy or the functional
recovery standard that is being talked about in California
comes in.
Mr. McNerney. So what I am hearing is pointing to a vision
where all these agencies working together can make a community
livable after an event.
Dr. McCabe. Yes. We are stepping the game up, and it is due
to the conversations about resilience, about knowing the ground
motion hazards better, about recognizing that buildings are not
stovepipes by themselves but they are connected via lifelines--
electrical, water, waste water. All of these things are
necessary to keep a community alive. So we have a broader
vision now, which is pretty exciting.
Mr. McNerney. Okay. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. We have time for one more
round, if the witnesses have time for one more round for us.
Let me just note that I think one of the primary
responsibilities of government, especially the Federal
Government in this case, is to make sure that we are prepared
for major threats to the overall safety and well-being of the
country and the American people, and that includes what we are
discussing today, and thank you for your input on that, and
that is understanding what threat we face and how should we
approach that threat about earthquakes.
There is also a threat that I am very concerned with about
asteroids, that an asteroid could appear. No scientist ever
told me that, oh, no, that will never happen, or it is a
thousand years away. Not one scientist I have ever talked to
would be surprised if we didn't find one five years away
tomorrow.
We have people who are warning us about our antibiotics
that are being faced with new challenges at the bacterial
level.
We have EMP, which is some solar activity that could happen
and fry our electric system.
All of these are challenges that I think are important for
the Federal Government to, number one, look at and see how much
danger there is and try to at least see what we can do, if
nothing else, to mitigate the damage that will be done if we
can't stop it altogether. I am hoping that we would develop a
system that could actually take an asteroid and nudge it off of
a path far enough out so that it wouldn't hit the earth. But
then again, we have to know that that might not happen.
With that said, I want to thank all of you for giving us
some suggestions today. But it comes down to, in all of these
areas, how much money are you going to spend. Mr. Poland was
very clear in his testimony: We have to spend more money. Okay.
Let me just note that we are spending already a trillion
dollars a year more than we are taking in, already. That is
without doing these things, without coming to grips in a big
way.
So what we have when we discuss these issues of the safety
of large chunks of our population, we have to understand that
if we are serious about that, we have to figure out where the
money will come from and what programs will have priority. Does
this have priority over other types of programs? I mean, we
just voted for a farm program. I voted against it, but I don't
know what my colleagues did. We had an amendment that said we
are going to spend so many millions of dollars promoting beer
and wine, America's beer and wine.
Now, when you are spending more than a trillion dollars a
year more than you are taking in, that just means we are going
to have to start making priorities in terms of what we are
going to spend, and I assume by your testimony today is what
you are telling us is that there is a serious threat. That is
why I came along in the beginning saying how serious is this
threat? There is a serious threat that large numbers of people
in our population could be in great danger, and if we focus on
this it will cost a certain amount of money, but we can save
lives afterward.
With that said, I would hope that the next time--I am not
going to ask you guys or any of our witnesses to say what areas
we should cut. But let me just suggest that that bit of
information as comparing one program to another will help us a
lot more than simply telling us what the threat is.
Does anyone have any suggestion of how much money we need
to spend now? Mr. Poland suggested $400 million. I forget the
exact amount.
Mr. Poland. It was $300 million a year.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Two hundred million dollars a year.
Mr. Poland. Three hundred million.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Three hundred million dollars a year. And
is there some other program that you think, a science-based
program that you think does not measure up to that?
Mr. Poland. Great question. You are in a whole lot better
place to judge that than I am because you see all the programs.
We are the experts. We see a program. We recognize that there
are things that could be done that are not being done.
I know in my practice, for all the thousands of buildings
that my staff and I have evaluated and recommended
strengthening for, very few, probably less than 20, were ever
strengthened because it is too expensive. Why is it too
expensive? Well, we don't know everything we could know.
Now, if you could invest $300 million a year in the
program, and you could create design guides and maps and GIS
systems and tools that are necessary to activate the money that
is available out there to do all this, none of this money is
going for brick and mortar, none of it is going to fix
anything. All it is doing is doing the research necessary to
provide the refined tools to make this thing affordable and
practical so that people go ahead and want to do it.
And the other thing that I keep noticing is when these
hazards occur, when these natural disasters occur and people
haven't taken care of things because they didn't think they
could afford it and they don't have insurance, then you guys
are great. You come in--and I hope you do it for us when it
happens to my community--you come in with a whole lot of money
and you fix things, and that is great, and that is part of what
this program is about, trying to figure out how to get the cost
of that repair bill down, because the Federal Government is the
last stop for repairing things.
So it seems to me the comparison you are asking for, the
programs to cut, I have no idea.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay.
Mr. Poland. But I think that we need to have a different
view of what this $300 million a year is going to get us.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, we do have, just as I say, lurking
right there in the background as we are trying to make our
decisions, a trillion dollars in debt every year more. So at
some point that will be a huge threat to the well-being, and I
hope we never see it, the type of financial crisis we are
setting ourselves up for by not being able to prioritize.
But with that said, you have made your case today, I think
very well.
Yes, sir, Dr. Hickman.
Dr. Hickman. I think those are great questions. We
obviously are not in the same position you are. But I look at
the Haywired scenario, which is the scenario of the losses from
a magnitude 7 earthquake on the Hayward Fault, more than $82
billion in damage, 18,000 injuries, 800 fatalities, and then
there is fire after that, loss of water, loss of
telecommunications, migration of people out of the Bay Area,
the potential devastation of an economy.
There are some tough decisions to make, but I think we need
to revitalize the entire NEHRP program. This is a huge problem,
and I agree with sheltering in place. We need to look at
infrastructure, we need to make sure the water comes in, the
roads can come in for rescue personnel, the water can come in
to fight fires.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And strengthening them, as you have made
the point, actually can make them more effective even before
any type of earthquake were to happen.
Just one last question about the threat itself. We see this
volcanic activity in Hawaii. Is that a warning sign to us? Is
that something that could indicate that there might be some
earthquake activity here? Does the volcanic activity in some
way relate to earthquake activity?
Dr. Hickman. I think this is a question for me.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Rohrabacher. Whoever can answer that.
Dr. Hickman. In the case of Hawaii, that is really not
connected to the plate boundaries that cause the earthquakes.
Hawaii is sitting on top of a hot spot coming up from the
mantle. So it basically is being melted from below. Hawaii is
the end of a chain of mountains that were formed by melting
through the crust.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay, so that is different.
Dr. Hickman. All by itself, it makes little earthquakes. We
had a 6.9 earthquake associated with eruptions in Kilauea. That
is pretty big, but that is not really part of the same problem
we face here in California.
Mr. Rohrabacher. One of the things, the last thing, and
then I will make sure my colleagues get a chance to ask
whatever questions you have.
I have been very concerned that we have nuclear energy
facilities that, in an earthquake--I mean, look at what
happened in Japan. They were told this is absolutely safe,
there is no way you are going to have any problem with this,
and then look at what happened in Japan.
Just very quickly, number one, let me just note that we can
build the next generation of nuclear power--we are capable of
that; we haven't done it yet--that I know would be safe. But
currently, with these light-water reactors, which I think are
inherently dangerous, are we safe now if there is an
earthquake? Is that a part of this threat?
Just very quickly I will go down the line.
Dr. McCabe. What do you mean is this part of the earthquake
threat?
Mr. Rohrabacher. Do you think that our current nuclear
power plants can withstand a 7.5 earthquake and not leak
radioactivity?
Dr. McCabe. Well, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory--I started
out in the nuclear business, but I haven't been in that for
quite a while. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has each
plant site do an in-depth seismology survey. So each individual
plant is sited and is designed based on the risk that exists
for that particular location.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. Let me ask you this: Where is San
Onofre on the fault line here? Is it on the fault line? Is it
down here? Okay. Well, it doesn't look that far away from a
fault line to me.
Dr. McCabe. If I were living in Southern California, I
would have less concern about that because of all of the
attention of all the engineers and all the regulators at the
state and Federal level. I would have less concern about that
than I would about, perhaps, other things that are out there.
Risk is relative.
Mr. Rohrabacher. It is. However, if that happens to go
down, we are talking about millions of people being irradiated,
as compared to some people who, maybe thousands of people
losing their lives in unstructured buildings. Also, of course,
I think that all the experts, as I say, just guaranteed the
Japanese that there is just no possibility ever. What I think
is very damaging and just outrageous is we are still trying to
sell light-water reactors to different countries in the world,
and they are inherently dangerous. We have the technology
capabilities to build safer nuclear reactors, and we should.
But anyway, does anyone else have any comment on this?
Mr. Poland. I just want to add to what Dr. McCabe said. I
think that it is important not to compare buildings that were
built without any consideration for seismic design,
unreinforced masonry brick buildings, with a nuclear power
plant, even if it was designed and constructed 30 years ago. It
was given an extraordinary amount of consideration in design
analysis by the best experts that we had because of the very
threat that you are talking about.
One of the things that we saw in Japan, I believe, is that
we had a black swan event. We had an event that nobody thought
was going to happen, or at least the consensus of the community
was that event was not going to happen. The wave wasn't going
to be that high, we weren't going to experience that. So to me,
I don't think it is proper--maybe I shouldn't say that. I think
we have to recognize that that event was something completely
out of the ordinary expectation.
But the main point I wanted to make was not to draw
conclusions from very poorly built buildings and something that
has been built deliberately in a very careful process.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, they are two different threats, and
I just have to say that I personally have been disturbed that
we have not developed the next generation of nuclear power,
which we know we can do, that would not leave us as vulnerable
as the current system.
Mr. Takano?
Mr. Takano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Poland, this $300 billion figure that you --
Mr. Poland. Three hundred million.
Mr. Takano. Three hundred million.
Mr. Poland. Million. You guys always say billion. We gulp
to say million.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Takano. I was thinking $300 billion.
Mr. Poland. Oh, no.
Mr. Takano. So, $300 million.
Mr. Poland. We could fix all the buildings with that kind
of money.
Mr. Takano. We could fix all the buildings. But that makes
more sense, $300 million, which is not bricks and mortar but
which is about research, which is about information. The
picture I am getting from you is it would help us understand
what buildings were built in a liquefaction area that would
make little sense to invest a lot in retrofitting. But that
information that the Federal Government would provide to the
local planners and the building codes would say if you are
going to build on areas of liquefaction going forward, you had
better build to this standard or not build there, just
discourage building there at all.
Mr. Poland. Or accept the consequences, yes.
Mr. Takano. Well, it also, I assume, would bring the market
into this, because insurance companies who underwrite
earthquake insurance would be able to use this information also
and price their policies accordingly.
Mr. Poland. That is right.
Mr. Takano. So it would be government data that would also
inform other kinds of market incentives to be able to drive
this in the right direction.
Mr. Vernon, you have something to say about this?
Dr. Vernon. One other aspect of that $300 million per year,
it also fully fills up the Advanced National Seismic System. So
not only do you have the research component that you have
talked about, it also gives us the seismic network monitoring
capability that had been fully planned for. So that is another
component of that $300 million a year.
Mr. Takano. It is not all the block by block analysis.
Mr. Poland. No, that is one piece of it.
Mr. Takano. One piece of it.
Well, this has been a very fascinating hearing. I want to
understand, is this research, the conclusions you have drawn
about what people would do if they couldn't shelter in place,
is that part of the social science that needs to be done? I
understand that there is a social science aspect to responding
to earthquake disasters.
Mr. Arba. That certainly sounds like an opportunity for
that. I think a lot of the focus on the social sciences,
especially in the current environment with the focus on
earthquake early warning, is how to best utilize that alert.
But that is certainly an opportunity that could be pursued.
Mr. Takano. Go ahead, Mr. Poland.
Mr. Poland. I would add one thing. The NIST Community
Resilience Planning Guide, which is kind of the framework for
this new generation of building codes and this new generation
of thinking about how we want things to perform, starts by
understanding what the social institutions are, and that is
working with social scientists, and then prioritizes which of
those social institution products and economic products are
necessary at what time, and then how those are supported by the
built environment. That is how the performance goals are
developed.
That is something we have never done before, in my mind, is
turn to the social science community and have them help us
understand what people need, how they are going to respond, and
what communities need in order to efficiently recover.
Mr. Takano. Mr. Arba, I understand that San Francisco and
Los Angeles have undertaken major initiatives as described by
Dr. McCabe, the ordinances they have passed, the commitment to
look at what buildings need to be retrofitted, and there is a
social justice element to how these ordinances were designed. I
understand the California legislature is moving forward with
some of its plans.
How is it that we can make sure that this reauthorization
works in tandem and helps leverage what California is doing,
and how can the Federal Government be of the best assistance to
the State of California?
Mr. Arba. Yes. I mean, certainly as these policy issues
advance, as part of Cal OES and working with our partners, we
are often looking to that research in order to make the
decisions that we have to make on these separate
considerations. So I would just say, consistent with what was
said earlier about continuing to make sure that among all of
the different research topics that we have that are covered in
the NEHRP program, that a specific emphasis is called out for
research as mentioned.
Dr. McCabe. I will just add that we believe that the social
science aspects, the policy aspects, are very, very important.
We brought on social science expertise at NIST to help in this
process because it all has to do with accepting the risk,
making decisions about the risk, ultimately engaging in
programs that will make things better. This is a very
grassroots kind of thing, but you are talking about a community
surviving and potentially flourishing. So it is not just the
engineering, and that is a big part of this going forward.
Mr. Takano. So the seismic hazard maps--go ahead, Mr.
Hickman.
Dr. Hickman. Yes, I was going to add--maybe that is where
you are heading with your question. Getting the more kind of
high-resolution pictures we need for seismic hazard in urban
areas is something that people have done in Seattle and Los
Angeles, but we need to do more of that. So urban seismic
hazard mapping is one way to produce a very high-resolution
picture, not quite block by block, but close, of how the ground
is going to shake during an earthquake using realistic models
for how the sediments focus the energy, where the faults are,
how the faults might break.
So it is important to think about the science, too, because
your liquefaction models depend upon the ground-shaking models,
because it is ground shaking that causes liquefaction.
So when you think about this, think about the integrated
package that involves the engineering, but also the earth
science that feeds into that, and the social science that
controls how people respond. I think that is the beauty of
NEHRP, that we all work together on these problems. We are
already working very closely with Cal OES on earthquake early
warning, for example. So I would just like to see this sort of
horizontal building of these kinds of models that depend on
solid science, really good engineering, and then the social
science to make sure people know what to do with the
information they have.
Mr. Takano. Yes, I was going in that direction with the
seismic maps, that that is going to be very useful for city
planners, for insurance companies. More information will help.
The market can also help guide us in the right direction as
well.
But I think the public needs to understand the risks and
where the liabilities are in a community, how are we going to
address the low-income folks who are living in the riskiest
areas that constitute our important workforce. We are a great
economy, depending on which statistics the fifth or sixth
largest economy in the world, and what happens to us if we
become disabled? And the question is how disabled? And the
perfect word again is resilience. How do we plan for
resilience?
Thank you very much. I am going to yield back my time. This
has been a fascinating hearing.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Mr. McNerney?
Mr. McNerney. Again, I thank the Chairman again. And again,
I am going to follow up on Mr. Takano's question to Mr.
Hickman.
You were talking about models or how we can model the kind
of resolution to be helpful in planning. How advanced are the
models that could be used to do that? Is that an area of
research that the $800 million would go to?
Dr. Hickman. Absolutely, that is an area where more work is
needed. We have very sophisticated computer models now. We are
missing information, for example, on the structure of
sedimentary basins beneath Seattle, beneath Los Angeles,
beneath San Francisco. We know from Mexico City that sediments
resonate with different earthquakes, and that has big
implications for tall buildings and engineering.
So we need more information to characterize the geology
beneath the big cities that face so much risk. We need more
information on characterizing the faults that are along them.
How are those faults likely to break based upon their past
history? So that means doing more of what we call paleo-
seismology, looking backward in time to see how faults broke
over time. And we need to do more work on seismic wave
propagation, how do the earthquake waves coming away from the
fault change as they come up to the surface, and how are they
modified by the soils. How does that lead to liquefaction? How
do landslides occur?
There are a lot of unanswered questions. So I think the
science, the drive, a lot of important hazard and risk
reduction products here.
Mr. McNerney. Would you say that is more empirical science
or more computational theoretical?
Dr. Hickman. It is both. But we are computational. There
are certainly super-computers churning away right now on these
kinds of models, but we need more data to feed into those, and
we also need more theoretical understanding.
Mr. McNerney. Okay. Good.
I also want to hear a little bit more about the TAs and the
ANSS. How do you say ANSS?
Dr. Vernon. It is the Advanced National Seismic System.
Mr. McNerney. I mean, the TAs, are they flexible
geographically? How does a TA work?
Dr. Vernon. It was a project that started under the
National Science Foundation and is now pretty much finishing
its end of life. It is completing its deployment in Alaska now.
What we have left behind is this Central and Eastern U.S.
network, which is now part of the ANSS --
Mr. McNerney. But what is a TA?
Dr. Vernon. Transportable array. It is part of the
EarthScope program under the National Science Foundation. It
was an MREFC, Major Research Equipment Facility --
Mr. McNerney. But what does it mean? Are there major
sensors every few kilometers, or --
Dr. Vernon. Each station was deployed for about two years.
There were 400 deployed at a time. You would pick one up on the
back on the West Coast and move it more to the East, and they
just kept rolling them forward. Each station was in place for
about two years as we moved across the country.
Magically, right about the time in 2007 and 2008, we got
into Oklahoma right when all the earthquakes started there,
happening there.
Mr. McNerney. How do they fit in with the ANSS?
Dr. Vernon. They inform the ANSS in the sense of where the
seismicity is. It gives you a snapshot in time. It gives you
more information about the structure, like Steve was talking
about, talking about how do you actually get the amplitudes
that you might expect from certain size earthquakes. So it gave
us a data set that we can use to inform some of these models
and studies that we are talking about, cross reference.
Mr. McNerney. So is the ANSS also an array? What is it?
Dr. Vernon. No. The Advanced National Seismic System is a
set of seismometers deployed permanently in the ground
throughout the U.S. There are big components here in
California. There is a Northern California Seismic Network, a
Southern California Seismic Network. There is one in
Washington. They are integrating them together to do these
earthquake early warning systems. There is a big system in
Alaska. There are ones in the Central U.S. around the New
Madrid area.
Mr. McNerney. Can the TA become part of the ANSS?
Dr. Vernon. It could have been if it were left in place,
but we lost that opportunity. That is what I was trying to say.
When we do these large-scale programs, we should be thinking
about the longer-term implications, how we could leverage those
investments to make more efficient use of the dollars that we
do spend on science.
Mr. McNerney. All right.
Dr. McCabe. If I can add, ultimately if you are going to
have an engineer design a building or a lifeline system, we
need to know what the threat is, what the seismology is.
Particularly in the eastern two-thirds of the country, that
data provided by the TA system is invaluable. Rare events like
the 2011 Mineral, Virginia earthquake revealed the importance
of having instruments, even in places where you may not expect
earthquakes to occur with regularity. But it is important for
us to do our job as engineers.
Mr. McNerney. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, I want to thank our witnesses. I
want to thank my two colleagues for joining us.
This has been, I would say, an enlightening hearing. It was
fun, transmitting important information and doing so in a way
that is interesting. Thank you, witnesses. Thank you very much
for coming and sharing your expertise in the way you did.
Let me just say that I visited Pompeii with my family. Have
you ever visited Pompeii? Pompeii was one of the most powerful
cities in the world. People who have not been there should
visit Pompeii to see what nature can do overnight. There you
have this evidence that has been put down. People's bodies are
covered with that soot and everything.
But what is most important is here you had this powerful
city, and within a day it no longer really existed. We know
that there are major challenges in nature. I mentioned
asteroids or something like that, and we do need to make sure
that we do understand that these challenges are there and what
we can do about them. You have outlined today what we can do
that would perhaps save lives in the long run and make sure
that if there is a major earthquake, which there will be, in
Southern California, that we survive that and that we minimize
the suffering that will take place in one of these acts of
nature.
So you have given us specific actions and specific policies
that you said would help deal with that and help us minimize
that type of suffering that would result from an earthquake. So
let's hope that we can now--we understand the challenge. The
biggest challenge is making sure we are responsible enough. If
it is only $200 million, not even billions --
[Laughter.]
Mr. Rohrabacher. When people come to us, it is always
billions, right? Well, that is a very reasonable amount. But we
have a trillion-dollar deficit we have to deal with. And I
would hope that when we look at that issue of spending a
trillion dollars more than we are taking in, that what you have
talked about today, I believe a primary responsibility of
government, especially the Federal Government, is to make sure
that they protect the safety of the American people, both from
foreign attack but also by natural disasters, what we are
discussing today. So it is our responsibility. Thank you for
giving us some insights that will be useful to us.
With that said, the record will remain open for two weeks
for additional comments and written questions from members.
The hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:58 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
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Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Dr. Stephen Hickman
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Appendix II
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Additional Material for the Record
Report submitted by Representative Jerry McNerney
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