White House Quake Summit: Watch Live

Washington, DC-- The White House expected to announce this morning a renewed effort to finish building a network of earthquake-detecting seismic sensors.  The hope is to provide people in West Coast states anywhere from seconds to minutes of warning of the incoming shockwaves of an earthquake that's already underway. Q13 FOX News This Morning talked with one of the summit participants UW professor and Director of the Pacific NW Seismic Network, John Vidale. Vidale says more sensors are needed to complete the network to improve the speed and accuracy of the Shake Alert program that's currently being beta-tested in California. Roughly 14 million dollars is needed to complete the network of sensors, a small price compared to the estimated 5 billion dollars in damage that a large quake would end up costing the Pacific Northwest.

You can watch the news conference now live:



The Shake Alert program has been in the testing phase since 2012. The hope is to give residents in Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada and Utah a warning of incoming shockwaves from an earthquake. If you'd like to see a demonstration of how the Shake Alert system would work check out this link.