Taiwan intends to build its first undersea seismic station, designed to improve the country’s early warning system and save valuable seconds when earthquakes strike, officials said yesterday.
The station, which is scheduled to come into service in 2011, would help reduce the margin of error when monitoring undersea quakes and improve on the nation’s existing system of land-based seismic stations.
The new facility would provide a roughly 10 second warning ahead of earthquakes and a 10 minute alert ahead of the impact of a tsunami, said Kuo Kai-wen (郭鎧紋), director of the Central Weather Bureau’s Seismological Center.
“The few seconds extra will give people precious time to seek shelter and flee coastal areas in the case of killer quakes,” he said.
NEC of Japan won the NT$423 million (US$13 million) contract to build the station, which will be situated some 45km off the northeastern coast, an area frequently hit by earthquakes, he said.
Taiwan’s three-phase earthquake early warning system has slashed the time of quake detection from up to three minutes in 1992 to around 35 seconds today.
Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates, is regularly shaken by earthquakes. A 7.6-magnitude quake killed about 2,400 people on Sept. 21, 1999.
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