Stations which catch tsunami-creating earthquakes will be turning off about Mid-November following NOAA funding cuts, something Alaska’s State Seismologist Michael West is clueless to why they were made.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Nine Alaska tsunami detection stations will go offline in mid-November after NOAA cut $300,000 in federal funding, creating dangerous gaps in the state’s early warning system, Alaska’s state seismologist Michael West told Alaska’s News Source Friday.
He says he doesn’t know why the cuts were made. “People should be concerned about anything that degrades our earthquake and tsunami capabilities,” West said. “Anything that undoes some of the really hard work that’s been put in through the years to try and make us safer in light of these events.” West said he received an email from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in September informing him that funding for these stations would no longer be renewed. “Beginning Oct. 1, NOAA would no longer be supporting the seismic data collection effort through the Alaska Earthquake Center,” West said. The cuts, which come in the middle of a government shutdown, will eliminate funding for nine seismic monitoring stations beginning in mid-November. West said many of the stations are located in the Aleutian Islands — an area he called a breeding ground for deadly tsunamis — warning this could create dangerous blind spots in Alaska’s tsunami detection capabilities. Alaska’s News Source reached out to NOAA for comment multiple times, including phone calls and emails, but they did not return a response. “Thank you for your message,” an automated email to NOAA reads. “The U.S. government is closed. We are unable to access and reply to emails until appropriations are enacted and the government is reopened. We look forward to acting upon your message once operations resume.” For many of these stations, there are no substitute stations surrounding the ones that will go offline. Most seismic monitoring stations are located in the interior or in South Central, just east of Anchorage.Alaska is no stranger to devastating and life-altering earthquakes, tsunamis, and severe weather events. However, the effort to mitigate the damage of these natural disasters came well before the Great Alaska Earthquake shook the state. “The nation’s tsunami program began in 1946 after an earthquake here in Alaska killed 150 people in Hawaii.” The stations out in the Aleutians, which West said would detect a similar seismic event, would detect not just tsunamis that could hit Alaska, but the entirety of the West Coast. Then, the 1964 earthquake came and devastated the state - something West said, “changed the trajectory of the state.” “In the aftermath, during the rebuilding, it became clear that we needed ways to figure out how better to learn with these hazards. One of the outgrowths of that was the establishment of a statewide monitoring program that is today the Alaska Earthquake Center.” It’s that center which now has those tsunami-detecting stations in the Aleutians, and across the rest of the state, turning off. “We have had a quite a string of tsunami warnings in recent years, but have had the great fortune that event after event, they have not been producing impactful tsunamis,” he said. “Tsunamis that will change one of these days, but we are living in a time where it has been more than half a century now since a truly impactful tsunami in Alaska. And that knowledge is being lost.”West said he wasn’t sure why the funding stopped, but said it followed, what he calls, “turbulence of the federal government.” “There was some of the changes that have been happening high up in agencies, that a lot of decisions were made earlier this year, probably in some haste, without necessarily being aware of all of the downstream implications.” It’s been a slow drip to the end of NOAA funding, saying funding has only decreased over the years, but this cut is the final nail in the coffin.NOAA does not have any notice or documentation showing cuts to the Alaska Earthquake Center on its website.Alaska’s News Source has reached out to the governor’s office for comment, which has not yet been returned.Anchorage man accused of stabbing his mother to death indicted on murder chargesAlaska tsunami-warning stations to go dark following NOAA cuts
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