Earthquakes, Technology & School Safety

An engineer sets up the shake table at the UBC facility 

Yesterday (April 23, 2014) a 6.6 magnitude earthquake hit the west coast of Vancouver Island here in British Columbia.

As chance would have it, the previous day I had the opportunity to visit, along with a number of administrators and teachers from the Catholic Independent Schools of Vancouver Archdiocese, the UBC Earthquake Research Facility to begin the implementation and training process for the installation of an earthquake early warning system for the 49 Catholic schools located the greater Vancouver area.

News of the Vancouver area Catholic schools early warning system has been previously written about by various media outlets.

The following diagram helps explain how the Earthquake Early Warning system works:

In short, the technology being used, detects P-waves (prior to the earth shaking) and leverages a connected communication network to notify all our schools immediately.

Learning about P-Waves from Dr. Ventura

If a P-wave, triggered by an earthquake, is detected in any one of our schools (we have 49 schools from Powell River to Chilliwack - 300 km apart) the networked technology will trigger an alarm in all our schools simultaneously.

This alarm will give teachers and students precious time to duck, cover and hold before the shaking actually begins.

There are also plans to develop a smart phone app that will be synced to the system - giving individuals earthquake notification directly to their phones.

The roll out of this warning system has already begun and is scheduled to be functional some time this fall.  As we prepare for its implementation I am left with a couple of thoughts:

1. I am grateful for individuals who leverage technology to make a positive difference in our lives
2. Mobile, networked technology can unite a system.
3. I am hopefully that the work being done by our schools can lead to greater cooperation with other schools (public and independent) to help all students and teachers - like I've said before - they are ALL our children
4. I can see how one broad early warning system across British Colombia can benefit all of us. 

Still figuring it out......