Re: Funding,

Although there may be little to admire in the French economic system given
their unemployment rate at more than double the US rate, their insurance
companies are involved in risk assessment and adjust rates accordingly. If US
insurance companies were similarly involved, perhaps they would be willing to
fund seismic hazard studies. My hunch is that they are discouraged from doing
so by the intrusion of government agencies.

Cheers,
Erich Kern
Murrieta, CA


-----Original Message-----
From: S-T Morrissey 
To: psn-l@.............. 
Date: Monday, December 20, 1999 11:21 AM
Subject: NEIS quake reporting


Regarding the timeliness of earthquake reporting by NEIS:

I would like to step in on their side and suggest that they do
a good job (who doesn't make mistakes now and then?) with their
limited resources.

The days of having a funded "duty seismologist" just for the sake
of the science are long past. With the great automation of the
data retrieval and access, the usual scientific concern after a
quake is how well it was recorded by the stations that are key to
the event's contribution to understanding the earth. This is, of
course, an after-the-fact assessment; the data are or are not.

The funding for NEIS is strongly related to earthquake hazard
assessment and the task of informing emergency management agencies
worldwide about the human response required after a damaging quake.
So they do have someone to respond with an official notice to
anything that might be considered a risk. I don't know the details,
but I am sometimes surprised as to whose name is on the report;
it looks like everyone helps out.

Regarding the "missing" event at 03:36 19 Dec: NEIS did report the
previous IRIAN JAVA event at 17:44Z 18 December, and an event at 0048Z
19 December in the Marianas (Mb 6.1), with a Mb 5.2 aftershock at
04:42., and A 5.0 in Peru at 09:35. So they were on the job. Why
the 5.6 was not listed is unknown.  Maybe the data was poor, since
other agencies also omitted it. Not all earthquakes have a definitive
P phase (usually required for teleseismic locations) with a radiation
pattern that arrives at quality seismic stations; they just announce
themselves (especially SW Pacific events) with a long rippling surface wave.
NEIS  did list another mysterious event, a Ms 4.4 at Hokkaido, Japan ,
at 13:30, 18 December, at an unusual depth of 124 km.

Regards,
Sean-Thomas



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