Stepping Up to the Plate

Abstract

For someone coming from the outside to take a position with the federal government, one of the biggest challenges is understanding your mission and how it fits into the grand scheme of things. But coming to the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Earthquake Hazards Program, the task is made quite a bit simpler because the prime directive has been clearly set by Congress. Along with its three partners in the National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program (NEHRP), USGS shares a congressional mandate to develop “effective measures for earthquake hazards reduction”, promote their adoption, and “improve the understanding of earthquakes and their effects on communities, buildings, structures, and lifelines.” The USGS Earthquake Hazards Program is specifically tasked with providing earthquake monitoring and notifications, assessing seismic hazards, and conducting research needed to reduce the risk from earthquake hazards nationwide. The USGS Earthquake Hazards Program is a program that does not, and cannot, go it alone. In addition to close collaboration with the other NEHRP partners—the Federal Emergency Management Agency (now within the Department of Homeland Security), the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National Science Foundation (NSF)—fully a quarter of the program's funding supports directed research and earthquake monitoring activities by universities, state and local governments, and the private sector. This is a program that does not, and cannot, go it alone. In seeking to understand the capabilities that the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program can bring to bear and the challenges and opportunities that it faces, a good place to start is the USGS response to the 22 December 2003 San Simeon earthquake. In January of this year, the San Luis Obispo County (California) Board of Supervisors wrote a letter to USGS Director Chip Groat expressing appreciation for the Survey's assistance following the magnitude 6.5 San Simeon event, which killed two people …