From jprice@unr.edu Fri Sep 8 08:02:56 2000 Return-Path: Received: from equinox.unr.edu (equinox.unr.edu [134.197.1.2]) by quake.seismo.unr.edu (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.1) with ESMTP id IAA01396; Fri, 8 Sep 2000 08:02:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from jprice (jonprice.nbmg.unr.edu [134.197.46.74]) by equinox.unr.edu (8.10.1/8.10.1) with SMTP id e88F2Xo01063; Fri, 8 Sep 2000 08:02:33 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200009081502.e88F2Xo01063@equinox.unr.edu> X-Sender: jprice@134.197.1.2 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.1 Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2000 08:01:01 -0700 To: rhess@unr.edu, ddavis@unr.edu, tgarside@unr.edu, jbell@unr.edu, ramelli@unr.edu, cdepolo@unr.edu, gblewitt@unr.edu, diane@seismo.unr.edu, jga@seismo.unr.edu, igbuckle@unr.edu, saiidi@unr.edu, sanders@unr.edu, norris@ce.unr.edu, stevew@seismo.unr.edu, louie@seismo.unr.edu, brune@seismo.unr.edu, vonseg@seismo.unr.edu, feng@seismo.unr.edu, jcslong@mines.unr.edu, robertd@fallon.scsr.nevada.edu, saiidi@unr.edu From: Jon Price Subject: Report to be released by FEMA on September 20 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Lines: 180 Status: RO Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 9495 TO: The Earthquake Community at UNR Depending on how big of a deal FEMA wants to make with its press release regarding its forthcoming HAZUS report on average annual loss from earthquakes in the United States, we may get lots of calls at UNR regarding this. Craig dePolo and I will be at the Seattle meeting when the report is released on September 20, and John Anderson will be in transit from the SCEC meeting to the Seattle meeting that day. Therefore some of the press questions may come to others. Below I include some of the key points that I will make if asked. >From my perspective the most important point for us to stress regarding FEMA's HAZUS work is that EARTHQUAKE HAZARDS ARE SIGNIFICANT IN NEVADA. I assume that the report will have numbers that are similar to earlier versions that we have seen - something on the order of $50 million per year as an estimate of the average annualized loss from earthquakes for residential and commercial buildings in Nevada. A direct hit in one of our urban areas could easily exceed $1 billion in economic losses. In my note to the other State Geologists and to the State Emergency Management Directors (see below) I tried to alert them to some of the concerns we have had about the HAZUS results. In particular, we need to be careful not to put too much emphasis on Nevada's rankings relative to other states. Ron Hess and Craig dePolo at NBMG and Feng Su in the Seismo Lab have some experience running HAZUS for scenarios. We have not had the resources to update the FEMA files to include local geological conditions. This means that the results for Nevada (which will be heavily weighted in terms of dollar losses to the Reno-Carson City and Las Vegas Valley urban areas) use FEMA's default soil conditions for attenuation functions and could be substantially improved. Further fault studies, geologic mapping, seismic research, engineering measurements of soil conditions, geodetic monitoring, and neotectonic modeling will likely improve the probabilistic seismic hazard maps and attenuation data that feed into HAZUS calculations. Working with local building and taxation/assessment authorities could substantially improve the building-stock data in the HAZUS program as well. We are doing quite a bit in Nevada with geological, seismological, and engineering research at the University of Nevada, Reno and with several activities of the Nevada Earthquake Safety Council (scenarios, emergency response and recovery exercises, training for building inspectors, guidelines for professional practice, K-12 school activities, and maps, brochures, and reports for the general public). But MUCH MORE NEEDS TO BE DONE. The release of this HAZUS loss-estimation report for earthquakes in the United States provides us with an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the need for support of earthquake programs. We could use this report in support of federal funding for the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program, the USGS's Advance National Seismic System and the National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program, NSF's Earthscope and its components that are most significant for Nevada (Plate Boundary Observatory, U.S. Array, and InSAR), NSF's support for earthquake engineering and science research centers, and State support for NBMG, the Seismological Laboratory, academic programs in geosciences and engineering at UNR and UNLV, and the Nevada Earthquake Safety Council. Thanks for your help, should you be asked to comment about the significance of the FEMA report. Jon >Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2000 16:48:33 -0700 >To: AASGStateGeologists, AASGAssociates, WSSPCBoard >From: Jon Price >Subject: YOU MAY WANT TO ACT - EMBARGOED HAZUS REPORT >Cc: StuNishenko, s_nishenko@msn.com, MikeArmstrong, CraigWingo, PattiSutch, JimGreene > >TO: State Geologists > State Emergency Management Directors > >FROM: Jon Price > President, Association of American State Geologists, and > Chair, Western States Seismic Policy Council > >cc: Stu Nishenko, Mike Armstrong, Craig Wingo, Patti Sutch > >You may want to pay close attention to an e-mail message that we expect to receive from FEMA early next week. > >As you probably are aware, Stu Nishenko with FEMA has been working for some time on a report that will present a state-by-state and national perspective of anticipated dollar losses from earthquakes using HAZUS. HAZUS is FEMA's computer model for estimating losses from earthquakes (and eventually wind and flood hazards). Stu told me this morning at a National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program strategic planning meeting that his annualized loss-estimation report is scheduled to be released by Mike Armstrong, FEMA's Assistant Director for Mitigation, during his speech on Wednesday morning, September 20, at the National Earthquake Risk Mitigation Conference in Seattle. > >In discussions over the last couple of years with the WSSPC Board of Directors and the AASG Hazards Committee, Mike and Stu had promised that they would give State Geologists and State Emergency Management Directors opportunities to see the report before it is released, so that we are prepared to answer questions from the press and so that we can brief our bosses (including Governors) about the implications of the report's numbers prior to their seeing the results in the newspaper. > >Early next week Stu plans to send us an e-mail with instructions on how we can access the pre-release, embargoed version of the report via the Web. PLEASE BE SURE TO HONOR THE EMBARGO. That is, don't make any public release of the information until after 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, September 20, or whatever time Stu puts on his message to us. > >I suggest that you and others on your staff who are involved in earthquake programs and issues read the report or at least its executive summary. > >As I understand the HAZUS model, its calculations should be viewed as order-of-magnitude approximations. Although calibrations and checks using the Loma Prieta (1989) and Northridge (1994) earthquakes produce results that are within a factor of two of the real losses, the HAZUS program contains a number of assumptions about geological conditions and the value and type of buildings throughout the United States. The estimated numbers could thus be off by a factor of ten. It is therefore not wise to emphasize the difference between one state's estimated annualized loss from earthquakes of, say, $70 million, and another state's value of $200 million or $20 million. With additional work to include local geological and soil conditions, rather than the default values used by HAZUS, and better information on the local building stock, the uncertainty in the numbers can be reduced considerably. Nonetheless, the HAZUS annualized loss estimation is a good model that produces as reasonable national figure using a standardized methodology and consistent building inventory. Caution should be used when discussing the numbers at the state or local level. > >In any communications that you have with the press and others, I suggest that you also keep in mind that HAZUS results include estimated damage to residential and commercial buildings, but they do not include losses to lifelines (roads, bridges, power systems, water and sewage systems, etc.) or economic impacts from loss of business, unemployment, and other factors. That is, the HAZUS numbers are likely to be minimum estimates of total economic impacts from earthquakes. > >Another point to remember in using the report's numbers is that the basic input for HAZUS is the probabilistic seismic hazard analysis of the U.S. Geological Survey (their NEHRP provisions that also fed into the 2000 International Building Code). For many parts of the country this probabilistic approach shows a best estimate of expected annual loss, but it does not show a worst-case scenario or even a likely scenario. For example, a state with an average annual loss of, say, $10 million, might experience a significant earthquake only once every 100 years. Although this might imply that the one event would cost $1 billion (100 x $10 million), the cost may in reality be considerably higher. FEMA's report presents estimated annualized losses calculated from a long-term average estimate. The actual loss in any given year may be larger or smaller than this long-term average value. > >As an aside, one of the powerful aspects of HAZUS is that it can be run for a scenario earthquake, that is, to estimate loss from a single likely event in one urban area. > >The Board of Directors of the Western States Seismic Policy Council, which includes four State Emergency Management Directors and three State Geologists, has offered to review any press information that FEMA plans to include with its release of the report. We expect Stu to get this information to us as soon as he can. > >I would like to thank Stu, Mike, and Craig Wingo for their following through on our requests to see the report prior to its release. I believe that we have a great opportunity to capitalize on the report for the benefit of our state programs and our citizens. > >Thanks, > >Jon > > ********************************************** Jonathan G. Price Director/State Geologist Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology University of Nevada, Reno/Mail Stop 178 Reno, Nevada 89557-0088 OFFICE TELEPHONE: 775-784-6691 extension 126 HOME TELEPHONE: 775-329-8011 FAX: 775-784-1709 E-MAIL: jprice@unr.edu From jga@quake.seismo.unr.edu Mon Sep 11 00:52:06 2000 Return-Path: Received: from localhost (jga@localhost) by quake.seismo.unr.edu (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.1) with ESMTP id AAA08607; Mon, 11 Sep 2000 00:52:05 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 00:52:04 -0700 (PDT) From: "John G. Anderson" To: Jon Price cc: ken@seismo.unr.edu, glenn@seismo.unr.edu, plove@seismo.unr.edu, louie@seismo.unr.edu Subject: Re: Fwd: Report to be released by FEMA on September 20 In-Reply-To: <200009081628.e88GS8o24106@equinox.unr.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Lines: 65 Status: RO Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 2191 Jon, YOu may recall that DEM is holding a briefing on lessons learned from Emmitsburg on Wednesday. If the report is accessible to me on Tuesday, then Wednesday could be an opportunity for me to carefully describe the results to some key people (we have to honor the embargo, of course). Did you have any other ideas on when/how to give accurate numbers to the Governors office and DEM? I have a somewhat different take on the results than you do. Having had the opportunity to look carefully at the tables with average loss and loss ratio, it appears that the loss ratio follows the seismic hazard fairly closely - those places with the highest hazard have the highest loss ratio - with a modifier that those places with more development at risk tend to have increased loss ratio. This would suggest that in the highest rankings, the relative rankings may be more reliable than the actual loss numbers themselves. You suggest that this is an opportunity to make the case for more funding. I agree, but we should be prepared to make the case that with more funding we can actually help to reduce the risk. That is actually not easy. I think we should have a list of specific actions that seem to us to be appropriate. A couple of obvious ones: Las Vegas shows up with a higher average loss than Reno. We've been saying for years that we need a state-funded technician and that if we had that we would be better able to operate a decent network around Las Vegas. We've also argued that an office in Las Vegas would help, and have been consistently ignored in that also. A second obvious issue is a need for a neotectonic geologist to better map and quantify the active faults. In loss ratio, Reno is much higher than Las Vegas, of course, but we should anticipate the potential for some calls from Las Vegas, and thus the need to take a little time to brief some of our safety council members down there. We should have more ideas by Tuesday meeting. John _______________________________ John G. Anderson Nevada Seismological Laboratory University of Nevada Reno, Nevada 89557 Phone: 775-784-4265 FAX: 775-784-1833 email: jga@seismo.unr.edu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~