By Kelly McEvers and Lucy Jones
Mexico has had an earthquake early-warning system for decades, and other countries that get earthquakes — Japan, Taiwan — have them, too. The U.S. does not. NPR's Kelly McEvers talks to seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones, who spent years working with the U.S. Geological Survey to create a system.
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MCEVERS: As I mentioned in the introduction, you spent many years working on a warning system for this country. Why don't we have one yet? And what would it take to get one?
JONES: We have a prototype system. The reason it's not yet public is, quite bluntly, the funding hasn't been in place. And if one wants to be cynical, it's because we have not yet killed at least 2,000 people in an earthquake, which is what led to the development of these systems in other - every other country that has an operating one. But more directly, we have a prototype. To turn it into a robust public system, we need several things. There's a lot of maintenance and telemetry expense and software and support that needs to be in place, and the current budget uncertainties from Washington are affecting our ability to move forward on this.
MCEVERS: Aside from the warning system, how do you feel about preparedness? I mean, we're both in California, right? A big one's going to come. Everybody knows it's going to happen at some point. How prepared are we?
JONES: I think we're not nearly as prepared as we could be, but we are much better than we used to be. There's a lot of energy and excitement. City of Los Angeles has undertaken major improvements, passed five ordinances in city council unanimously, including mandatory retrofit of the dangerous buildings. And it's starting to spread to other Southern California cities as well. And there are several dozen other cities that are reaching out to get help in moving forward with ordinances themselves. These things happen, we're going to be a lot better off in our next earthquake.
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