Warning System

Structural engineer Kit Miyamoto was giving a speech in Japan on earthquake safety when this month's record quake struck, giving him a front-row seat for the unfolding disaster and what steps might save lives next time. "This disaster basically paralyzed the whole country," said Miyamoto, president of West Sacramento-based Miyamoto International, standing amid the wreckage in this battered coastal city. "We can learn a lot of lessons for California. " What worked, and what didn't?

The federal government's radiation alert network in California is not fully functional, leaving the stretch of coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco without the crucial real-time warning system in the event of a nuclear emergency. Six of the Environmental Protection Agency's 12 California sensors ? including the three closest to the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant near San Luis Obispo ? are sending data with "anomalies" to the agency's laboratory in Montgomery, Ala., said Mike Bandrowski, manager of the EPA's radiation program.

If Elizabeth Cochran allowed herself to dream, the future would look something like this: Every personal computer would double as a seismic monitor. That MacBook at the coffee house, the one used by the guy pounding out a screenplay? Working to detect ground tremors while its user sips a latte. The aging PC gathering dust in the guest room? Ready to catch the next quake. If Cochran, an earth scientist at UC Riverside, has her way, every time the ground beneath us shakes, those machines would capture its movement and feed the information to a central computer system, creating a rich -- and inexpensive -- portrait of how and where an earthquake is felt.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich is demanding action after some residents reported major problems with the county's emergency notification system during the Station fire. The supervisor said the system failed to tell residents the status of evacuation orders and in La Crescenta gave out an erroneous evacuation order. On Tuesday, Antonovich asked county staff to examine the effectiveness of the notification system and also look at ways to improve the county's website during emergencies.

Federal and local officials will unveil a new warning system today that is designed to stop runway incursions that for years have endangered planes taxiing to and from terminals at Los Angeles International Airport. The $7-million system relies on radar that is connected to status lights along a runway and eight taxiways deemed to have the highest risk for aircraft accidents.

An alarm that would warn pilots earlier of dangerously slow aircraft speed could have helped prevent a plane crash that killed 50 people in February, safety officials told an investigative panel Thursday. National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman raised the idea on the third and final day of a hearing into the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407, which went down near Buffalo, N.Y., killing all 49 people aboard and one person on the ground.

Federal officials are expected to announce today that they will install a $6-million warning system at LAX that dramatically reduced close calls on the ground in tests at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. At a news conference this afternoon, Robert A. Sturgell, acting FAA administrator, is expected to detail the agency's plan to install lights on one of the airport's four runways and at various taxiways on the north and south airfields. Testing is to begin early next year.

As an American Airlines jet readied for takeoff on the runway at this city's airport recently, red lights embedded in the pavement at intersecting taxiways down the field blinked on, warning other aircraft to stay clear. Air traffic controllers watched from the tower as the slender silver MD-80 started rolling down the runway, gaining speed on its way to Dallas. Once it was safe, the red lights clicked off.

Crescent City, Calif.,where 11 died in a tsunami in 1964, was hit last week by a wavecaused by a quake off the Russian coast. This time no one died andthere was little damage when a surge estimated at about 5 feet flowedinto the harbor. The earthquake was monitored by the Deep OceanAssessment and Report of Tsunamis, or DART, a system of sensors andbuoys that monitors earthquake and tsunami activity. An alert wasissued last week, but it was canceled more than five hours before thetsunami struck.

Nothing but compressed air, certainly not the rubber tread on the tires, keeps your vehicle suspended over the road. So, the amount of air in the tires is vitally important, a fact that is relentlessly driven home by safety experts but ignored by many motorists.