Research Fellow (Instrumentation) at the University of the West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad, Lloyd Lynch, is of the view that the introduction of strong motion instruments is one way to help curb the destruction that any volcanic activity can cause.
Lynch made the remarks at a press briefing at the Office of Disaster Management (ODM) on Tuesday, where members of the media taken on a site visit to the new Salisbury heights and Police Traffic department seismic stations.
These stations have been equipped with the strong monitoring instruments which provide an instrument that provides faithful recording before, during and after a disaster.
Lynch says the best prescription for an earthquake is “long term preparedness and mitigation” since one never knows when it is coming.
“So the best thing to do to safeguard against earthquakes is to mitigate by improving your building standards through building codes, improving your developmental standards by identifying areas that are prone to more ground shaking and choose not to put critical institutions like your hospital, power stations in those sites.”
And for this reason he said, they are hoping to install “as many as 15 strong motion instruments in the major urban centers in Dominica and other Caribbean islands.”
“We will be able to overtime build up a data base of ground response in different parts of the city and this information is quite useful for informing building codes and also for informing engineering designs. One of the standard methodologies that is used now in engineering design for tall buildings is to do a computer stimulation in which these type of time history of the ground motion can be fed into a program that test the actual design to see how it can respond to this ground motion,” he explained.
“So the engineer can use it and actually see how the design responds to not only the amplitude of ground shaking but also the different frequency of vibration that is a characteristic of the site,” Lynch added.
Lynch stated further that they have been monitoring volcanoes in Dominica for “many, many years” and during the period 1983 to the present the number of installations “grew sort of episodically after we had various episodes of volcanic unrest and was mostly focused on characterizing volcanic activity more than anything else. This fortified the network. It gave the capability to more accurately look and locate the earthquakes and report on the imminent threat.”
The project included the upgrading of the Scotts Head and Morne Daniel seismic stations and cost a total of US$ 80,000 from the European Union.
When earthquake hits having a million monitoring stations means nothing. The important point to note is having infrastructure up to par with modern technology. Dominia or Roseau is largely on unconsolidated pyro clastic material and will have magnified shaking in strong earthquake. Having said this, not sure prepping house s for earthquakes will protect them from a volcanic eruption. We still do not have sound evacuation and resettlement plan in place for people in most vulnerable areas. These two disasters are still the most unpredictable so the best thing is to have coprehensive preparation plan in place.
Great Work!