ScienceMakers Toolkit Manual - The History Makers

Clip 5 - The U.S. Geological Survey: The U.S. Geological Survey is earth science. That’s what we are. We
are scientists, earth science in every form. That’s what the U.S. Geological Survey consists of. A lot of people
fi gure that the U.S. Geological Survey only made maps. Well, that’s a big part of it, it’s a mapping, but they
also have the earth sciences and earthquakes is one big part of it, and geomagnetism is a big part, landslides and
those kind of things. But earthquakes is one big part of the U.S. Geological Survey. Our offi ce here and our offi
ce in Menlo Park is a big part of the U.S. Geological Survey. But it’s earth science, and it’s a water [quality]
--you know, a lot of water, you know, the qualities of water and things like that. And parts of it also is working
with dams, years ago, building dams, all those kind of--Bureau of Reclamation, and all that kind of stuff.
That’s, that’s what the U.S. Geological Survey is all about.
Clip 6 - Responding to earthquakes: We cannot predict, we cannot forecast earthquakes, and in the United
States right now, there’s no work being done on forecasting and prediction of earthquakes. So my role is--the
very fi rst thing we do is called earthquake early alerting. Now, when I say that, you think that I’m able to tell
you when and where the next earthquake is gonna be. I can’t do that. But what we can do, with technology
today, we are the only center in the world that [can] locate [earthquakes], compute magnitudes and disseminate
data on signifi cant earthquakes worldwide. And we do that here. So that’s the very fi rst thing that we do. Any
earthquake that is potentially damaging anywhere in the world, that could possibly kill people or cause damage,
we’re going to get the answers right now, and we’re gonna pass this information on to the proper authorities,
mostly to organizations that respond to disasters, and earthquakes is one of them. Get there, and begin your
rescue effort. And if you get there quickly, you can rescue a lot of people. When buildings crash and come
down on people, if you can get there quickly, you can get a lot of those people out alive. You can get the seriously
injured to the hospital. This is after the earthquake occurs. For U.S. earthquakes, anywhere in the United
States, we can have that information right here within thirty to forty minutes. We have that information, and we
have a hotline here that we can reach any emergency offi ce anywhere in the United States. And the minute that
we get that information all ready, we get on the phone, and we call them and say, here is where the earthquake
is, this is the location, this is the latitude, this is the longitude, this is the magnitude, and they get that. When
they see that, they know the population and they know everything about it. That’s when they fall into action to
start rescue. If the earthquake is in a foreign country, it takes us maybe, sometimes an hour or more to get the
information ready. We get it ready, and the fi rst thing we do, once we get all that ready, we give it to our embassy
or consulate in that country if we have one. And then the next place it goes, it goes to our State Department
in Washington, D.C. cause they’re supposed to know where all Americans are in the foreign countries. They get
it, okay. Then they have all these observatories around the whole world that are cooperating with us. They are
hooked into us to get our electronic mail for whatever; we locate [the] magnitude and everything. Even though
they might be doing their own [research] in their country, they want to know what we got because a lot of those
people are giving us data on a daily basis, real time basis, coming in by satellite. So that’s the way it goes. So
that is the very fi rst thing that we do. And it’s designed to try and save lives.
Clip 7 - Levels of earthquakes: A minor earthquake is 3.0 to 3.9, that’s minor. A light earthquake is 4.0 to 4.9,
that’s light. A moderate earthquake is 5.0 to 5.9. A strong earthquake is 6.0 to 6.9. A major earthquake is 7.0 to
7.9. And a great earthquake is 8.0 and above. That’s the way they classify it. And usually, when you get into
the moderate earthquakes, sometimes they can have considerable damage, but in most cases--I think I know of
one case in the U.S. where some people were killed, with one that was about a 5.9. Usually, you’re in a magnitude
of 6.0 when you get deaths in the United States, but many of the foreign countries, a lot less because their
structures are not near as strong as ours here. But that’s the way we classify them. And I don’t have my pager
on today. A pager, we carry pagers all the time that, information about these earthquakes come to us all the
time. Every time it locates one, it comes to us. It buzz us. You push the button. You got it. It’s coming in, all of
it. And we have two people that are always on call to respond to whatever happened, and these people are experienced.
They know what to do with certain magnitude earthquakes and where to go with it and all that kind of
stuff. And it’s my job to make sure that all of this is done and done properly.
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Earth Science