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Who We Are

TimeLine LLC has invented a new emergency earthquake detection and rescue assistance device. It is designed to help individuals, families, communities, and disaster response agencies to achieve greater emergency earthquake preparedness.

About the Device

The Survivor Alert is a Seismic Activity Warning and Rescue Assistance Device designed to detect seismic activity and sound an alert to warn of a possible earthquake in progress. The signal of this device may also be used to assist rescue workers in learning the proximity of a person that has become entrapped.

Disasters

MAGNITUDE/INTENSITY COMPARISON

Magnitude and Intensity measure different characteristics of earthquakes. Magnitude measures the energy released at the source of the earthquake. Magnitude is determined from measurements on seismographs. Intensity measures the strength of shaking produced by the earthquake at a certain location. Intensity is determined from effects on people, human structures, and the natural environment.

The following table gives intensities that are typically observed at locations near the epicenter of earthquakes of different magnitudes.

Magnitude	Intensity	Description
1.0 to 3.0	I	I) Not felt except by a very few under especially favorable conditions.
3.0 to 3.9	II to III	II) Felt only by a few persons at rest, especially on upper floors of buildings.
4.0 to 4.9	IV to V	IV) Felt indoors by many, outdoors by few during the day. At night, some awakened. Dishes, windows, doors disturbed; walls making cracking sound. Sensation like heavy truck striking building. Standing motor cars rocked noticeably.
		V) Felt by nearly everyone; many awakened. Some dishes, windows broken. Unstable objects overturned. Pendulum clocks may stop.
5.0 to 5.9	VI to VII	VI) Felt by all, many frightened. Some heavy furniture moved; a few instances of fallen plaster. Damage slight.
		VII) Damage negligible in buildings of good design and construction; slight to moderate in well-built ordinary structures; considerable damage in poorly built or badly designed structures; some chimneys broken.
6.0 to 6.9	VII to IX	VIII) Damage slight in specially designed structures; considerable damage in ordinary substantial buildings with partial collapse. Damage great in poorly built structures. Fall of chimneys, factory stacks, columns, monuments, walls. Heavy furniture overturned.
		IX) Damage considerable in specially designed structures, well-designed frame structures thrown out of plumb. Damage great in substantial buildings, with partial collapse. Buildings shifted off foundations.
7.0 and Higher	X or Higher	X) Some well-built wooden structure destroyed; most masonry and frame structures destroyed with foundations; Rails bent.
		XI) Few, if any (masonry) structures remain standing. Bridges destroyed. Rails bent greatly.
		XII) Damage total. Lines of sight and level are distorted. Objects thrown into the air.

-from the National Earthquake Information Center/Magnitude vs Intensity August 30, 2000.

Where do earthquakes occur?

Earthquakes primarily take place in three large zones of the earth:

• The circu-Pacific belt
• The Alpide belt
• The mid-Atlantic Ridge belt

The location of these belts are described by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) as follows:

"The world's greatest earthquake belt, the circum-Pacific seismic belt, is found along the rim of the Pacific Ocean, where about 81 percent of the world's largest earthquakes occur. The belt extends from Chile, northward along the South American coast through Central America, Mexico, the West Coast of the United States, and the southern part of Alaska, through the Aleutian Islands to Japan, the Philippine Islands, New Guinea, the island groups of the Southwest Pacific and to New Zealand. This earthquake belt was responsible for 70,000 deaths in Peru in May 1970 and 65 deaths and a billion dollars' damage in California in February 1971. Why do so many earthquakes originate in this belt? This is a region of young, growing mountains and deep ocean trenches which invariably parallel mountain chains. Earthquakes necessarily accompany elevation changes in mountains, the higher part of the earth's crust, and changes in the ocean trenches, the lower part. The second important belt, the Alpide, extends from Java to Suatra through the Himalayas, the Mediterranean, and out into the Atlantic. This belt accounts for about 17 per cent of the world's largest earthquakes, including some of the most destructive, such as the Iran shock that took 11,000 lives in August 1968, and the Turkey tremors in March 1970 and May 1971 that each killed over 1,000. All were near magnitude 7 on the Richter scale. The third prominent belt follows the submerged mid-Atlantic Ridge. The remaining shocks are scattered in various areas of the world. Earthquakes in these prominent seismic zones are taken for granted, but damaging shocks occur occasionally outside these areas. Examples in the United States are New Madris, Missouri, and Charleston, South Carolina. Many years, however, usually elapse between such destructive shocks."