The Nevada Earthquake
Safety Council
Twenty Years of vision and
promotion of an earthquakeresilient Nevada
• August 1978 Governor Mike O’Callaghan
established a 10-member Ad Hoc Panel
on Seismic Hazard Mitigation.
• They found that seismic safety efforts in
Nevada were in considerable disarray with
little communication and coordination and
that needed programs were not being
undertaken or were seriously
underfunded.
• The Panels #1 recommendation: establish
a 5-Year Seismic Safety Council to bring
“order out of chaos”.
• To accomplish this they drafted legislation
patterned after Utah’s “Seismic Safety
Advisory Council” and submitted it to the
1979 legislature, which did not pick this bill
up or consider the Panel’s five
recommendations or thirty-eight additional
conclusions.
Beginnings
• We noticed the Ad Hoc Panel’s #1
recommendation and NBMG sent out a
letter of inquiry and promoting the idea of
a Nevada Seismic Safety Council in early
1992.
• NDEM, NBMG, and UNRSL decided to
have a meeting at UNR, NDEM organized
and led the effort.
May 27, 1992
• First meeting of the “Preliminary Seismic Safety
Council”; 18 people
• Facilitated by Joanne Hoffard of NDEM
• First presentation – Earthquake Hazard in
Nevada, dePolo
• Discussed the Council, who should be on it,
June 24, 1992
• Presentation by Timothy Cronin of the
California Seismic Safety Commission:
development of California’s Commission
and the duty and role of government in
promoting seismic safety.
January 29, 1993
• Nevada Seismic Safety Council
• No official mandate yet
• John Anderson, Chairman
Assembly Bill 445
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April 1, 1993
Forty-one cosponsors
Establish an Earthquake Safety Council
Set forth membership composition
$20k
Died in committee
First Nevada Earthquake
Awareness Week
• April 18 – April 24, 1993
• Schools hold earthquake drill during week
– Letter to Nevada School Superintendents
March 26, 1993
• Nevada’s Earthquake Risk Reduction Plan
1993-1997
Priority 1: Establish a Seismic Safety Council,
Priority 2: Hold regional multistate exercise,
later endorsing a planning scenario be
created to facilitate this,
Priority 3: Upgrade seismic zone maps to
reflect “current assessments”.
August 27, 1993
• First Las Vegas meeting
• 24 attendees including Lynn
• Future of Council discussed:
– Name changed to Nevada Earthquake Safety
Council,
– Established as advisory body to Nevada
Emergency Management Division,
– Needs mission statement,
– Concentrate on statewide issues,
– Tranfer knowledge from NEHRP program to
Nevada users,
– Link between private sector and public sector,
– Be an inclusive versus an exclusive
organization,
– Quarterly meetings.
September 1993 Workshop
• Two-day earthquake-safety workshop
UNR Engineering Conference Center,
• Led by FEMA contractor,
February 18, 1994
• Meeting at McCarran International Airport,
• Bylaws reviewed,
• Talks on the September 1993 Klamath
Falls earthquake (M6) and the 1994
Northridge earthquake (M6.7).
February 23, 1996
• Committees
– Awareness and Education Committee
– Response and Recovery
– Engineering and Architecture
– Risk Assessment
– Geosciences
August 23, 1996
• Suggested Guidelines for Evaluating
Potential Surface Fault Rupture/Land
Subsidence Hazards in Nevada
August 22, 1997
• HAZUS Presentation by John Perry and
Ron Hess
– M6 in Las Vegas
• Earthquake Awareness and Mitigation
Week
– Statewide poster contest
NESC Awards in Excellence
began 2000
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Corey Farley, RGJ columnist
NDOT Highway 80 Bridge Retrofit
Keith Rogers, LVRJ reporter
Carson City School District, nonstruct. mit.
iGo Corporation, employee eq. awareness
Las Vegas Academy, eq. prep.
Nevada Public Works, CC Courthouse
retro.
February 18, 2000
• 2000 Nevada Earthquake Calendar,
60 entries for poster contest across the state
>17,000 delivered to each teacher in the state
• Guidelines for Evaluating Liquefaction in
Nevada,
• Update 1999 Hector Mine M7.1
earthquake in California.
May 19, 2000
• Living with Earthquakes in Nevada
• Tsunami Hazard at Lake Tahoe
• Sept. 2000 Joint meeting of seismic safety
commissions and councils at the National
Earthquake Risk Mitigation Meeting
February 23, 2001
• Two-hour media event – Nevada
Earthquake Hazards
• Held South and North meetings
• Post-Earthquake Media Scripts
February 22, 2002
• Las Vegas Valley Fault Exposure
• AEG Publication
August 23, 2002
• Council well under way drafting and
promoting Nevada Earthquake Safety Act
of 2003,
• Meeting of Nov. 16, 2002, Mark James
significantly changed wording of act,
• AB 57 Approved June 9, 2003
Include the seismic provisions when
adopting building codes in Nevada
HAZUS REPORTS
• Hess and dePolo (2006) each county,
• Price and others (2009) 38 Nevada
communities,
• Price and others (2011) Loss estimation
for the Wells earthquake,
• Price and others (2011) comparison of
ShakeMap versus HAZUS default
values.
May 10, 2007
• Joint meeting with the Utah Seismic Safety
Commission in St. George, Utah,
• Have met twice since together, in Wells,
Nevada (May 20, 2009) and Las Vegas
(Nov. 9, 2011).
Window of opportunity afforded
by earthquakes
• Supported usual media needs
• Living with Earthquakes in Nevada was
printed and included as an insert in the
Reno Gazette Journal; NBMG did a rapid
update of the booklet and FEMA Region
IX funded.
2010 First Nevada ShakeOut
• Extraordinary Public
Relations/Awareness/Preparedness Tool
• 110,000 signed up,
• 2011 Great Nevada ShakeOut;195,000
signed up; all but one school district.
2011-2012 Nevada
URM Building Inventory
Accomplishments
Accomplishments
NESC brought “order out of chaos”.
Accomplishments
NESC brought “order out of chaos”.
Established communication and
coordinated earthquake safety efforts.
Accomplishments
NESC brought “order out of chaos”.
Established communication and
coordinated earthquake safety efforts.
Undertook new efforts and enhanced
funding efforts in the seismic arena.
Benefits of NESC
• Awareness and preparedness is up in the state,
• Earthquake drills are held in schools again whereas they
were rare before,
• Teachers becoming more informed about earthquakes,
• Earthquake disaster response capabilities are vastly
better, due to a lot of factors, but the drumbeat from the
Council and the visualizations of earthquakes and
hazards provided supported these efforts and plans.
Benefits of NESC
• Working relationships are critical for
disaster response and uniform messaging
to the public.
• Earthquake insurance for public facilities in
the state (economic protection).
Benefits of NESC
Publications:
• Western Nevada has been exercised eight
times, one of the most exercised scenarios in
the Nation,
• One of the ten ways put out in the RGJ to tell
someone was in Mogul in 2008, was having
“Living with Earthquakes in Nevada” on their
coffee table.
NESC
• Building a foundation for an earthquakeresistant Nevada, brick by brick,
• Nevada’s social cueing for earthquake
preparedness and mitigation. One of the
teams in the state that is giving a uniform
voice for earthquake safety,
• Consistent voice for earthquake safety.