ShakeAlert is expanding to Alaska. Here’s why that matters beyond Alaska.

The USGS published its Phase 1 Technical Implementation Plan for expanding ShakeAlert to Alaska earlier this year. If you work in earthquake early warning or operate critical facilities on the West Coast, this is worth paying attention to, even if you never set foot in Alaska.

What the plan actually says

The plan lays out a buildout of 450 seismic stations across Alaska’s highest risk, most populated regions: 270 new stations, 160 upgrades to existing stations, and 20 stations that are already EEW-capable. Station spacing would be 10 km in urban areas, 20 km near seismic source zones that threaten population centers, and 40 km everywhere else.

Buildout would start around Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula, then extend westward toward Kodiak, east to Prince William Sound, north to Fairbanks, and eventually into Southeast Alaska. When complete, the network would cover 90% of Alaska’s population.

The estimated cost is $66 million in 2024 dollars. Congress directed the USGS to develop this plan in the FY 2022 Consolidated Appropriations Act and included $1 million to get the work started.

Why Alaska needs this

Alaska has more large earthquakes than the rest of the United States combined. More than three quarters of the state’s population lives in an area that could experience a magnitude 7 or larger event. And the state has already lived through the worst case scenario once: the 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake, a magnitude 9.2, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in North America. It lasted four and a half minutes, destroyed large sections of Anchorage, and triggered tsunamis that killed people as far away as Oregon and California.

In 1964, Alaska’s population was about 250,000. Today it’s over 730,000, with Anchorage alone at 288,000. The infrastructure at risk has grown considerably, but the warning infrastructure hasn’t kept pace. Alaska currently has no public earthquake early warning system.

Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks modeled what ShakeAlert could do with a full station network in place. For magnitude 7.8 scenarios along the subduction zone, warning times ranged from 0 to 73 seconds depending on distance from the epicenter. For magnitude 8.3 events along coastal faults, warnings could reach 10 to 120 seconds. Even for smaller crustal earthquakes (M7.3) in the interior and southcentral regions, the models showed 0 to 44 seconds of lead time.

To put that in practical terms: a few seconds is enough to drop and cover. Ten seconds is enough to stop a surgical procedure or open elevator doors. Once you’re past thirty seconds, you start talking about automated industrial shutdowns and evacuation triggers.

What this means for the West Coast

ShakeAlert already covers California, Oregon, and Washington with about 1,509 stations as of late 2023, approaching the design target of 1,675. The system serves over 50 million people and has been delivering public alerts since the full West Coast rollout completed in May 2021.

The Alaska expansion tells you a few things about where the whole program is heading.

The most obvious: federal investment is growing. Congress didn’t fund a study and shelve it. They directed the USGS to produce a buildable implementation plan with cost estimates and station-by-station detail. That reads like pre-construction, not exploration.

Beyond the funding signal, the operational model is proving it can scale. ShakeAlert was designed for the West Coast, but Alaska has a very different profile: remote terrain, extreme weather, limited telecommunications. If the architecture holds up there, it holds up anywhere. And every new coverage area means more facilities and more building operators who need to figure out what to do with a 10 to 60 second warning. That’s where companies like ours come in.

What facility operators should take from this

For anyone already running ShakeAlert integration at a hospital, school, or fire station on the West Coast, the Alaska expansion is confirmation that the federal government is building on this technology, not shelving it. Your investment has a long runway.

For those who haven’t looked at EEW yet: the network is getting denser in the states it already covers, and it’s now expanding to new ones. The expectations on facility operators aren’t going to get lighter from here.

We connect ShakeAlert warnings to automated protective actions inside buildings. If that’s a conversation worth having for your facility, get in touch.

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Sources and further reading:

• USGS Phase 1 Technical Implementation Plan for ShakeAlert Alaska Expansion
• Full text of the implementation plan (USGS Open-File Report 2025-1003)
• Alaska Earthquake Center: Earthquake Early Warning in Alaska
• University of Alaska Fairbanks: Early Warning System Could Provide Critical Seconds
• ScienceDaily: Scientists Reveal Alaska Could Get Up to Two Minutes’ Warning
• USGS: Entire US West Coast Now Has Access to ShakeAlert
• USGS: The 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake and Tsunami