Utah’s worst disaster is only a coin flip away within the next half-century — and experts say they don’t want the prospect of that imminent and devastating earthquake to fade from public attention.
With about a week to go in their 2025 session, lawmakers on Capitol Hill gave support Tuesday to restoring some version of a disbanded volunteer panel of the state’s top earthquake authorities, assigned to analyze those risks and advise residents on how best to withstand them.
HB513 would create a new Utah Commission on Earthquake Preparedness, which, according to the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Thomas Peterson, R-Brigham City, is meant to replace the long-standing Utah Seismic Safety Commission that legislators voted to cancel last year.
After a favorable 7-3 vote Tuesday from the House Government Operations Committee, the measure now advances to the full House.
Seismic researchers call the region’s looming earthquake threat the Big One — a magnitude 6.75 temblor or greater with terrible destructive power to crumble homes, schools, vital buildings and infrastructure — with potential to inflict a short-term economic toll of at least $80 billion.
Projections are that more than 3,000 Utahns could lose their lives in the disaster, with tens of thousands injured, due largely to the collapse of an estimated 140,000 homes and other structures made of unreinforced masonry, many of which were built before the 1970s.
For comparison, Utah’s Big One would be about 90 times stronger than the 5.7 magnitude quake in March 2020 centered near Magna — and would be more akin to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that killed more than 3,000 people and left nearly 200,000 homeless.
“We would have over a million people without water, sewer and power, and for many of them, those services would not return for many months,” said Ari Bruening, CEO of the regional planning agency Envision Utah. “So our main concern is: What does that do to our economy as a state?”
Experts also say that keeping alive public awareness of the predicted calamity is crucial, in light of a propensity by some Utahns to want to forget or ignore it.
A feared exodus on ‘day two’
Former Utah Seismic Safety Commission member and state Geologist Bill Keach said the attention going forward should be on “what I call day two. To me, it’s important that we’d be able to survive, in terms of both our infrastructure and our economy.”
Keach and others point to the yearslong aftermaths of major disasters such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. “All these people left and never came back,” he said, “because they hadn’t gotten ready for it.”
The Utah Seismic Safety Commission — a group of scientists, structural engineers, architects, government officials and other stakeholders — had worked for nearly three decades to improve the state’s readiness, with a key focus on fortifying crucial water and energy transmission lines, while raising awareness on unreinforced brick buildings.
Lawmakers voted in 2024 to “sunset” the commission, giving no formal explanation and with little debate. Some observers attributed the move to concern among GOP lawmakers over being reminded of the seismic vulnerability of some Utah schools.
But as the Wasatch Fault continues to be cited nationally as long overdue for a major temblor, Peterson, HB513′s sponsor, said getting rid of “a commission that cost the state absolutely zero dollars and provided valuable resources and benefits to the state, seemed inappropriate to me.”
His bill, Peterson said, would steer the new 14-member Commission on Earthquake Preparedness toward developing recommendations and goals — and call for the panel to sunset within six years.
The commission, besides cooperating with a host of local, state and federal government counterparts, would emphasize reducing regional risks and losses from a substantial quake, as well as provide preparedness information and resources to residents statewide.
A few seconds of ‘early warning’
Members of the canceled commission, meanwhile, issued a series of final recommendations last week as they faded away and put forward a guide to major steps the state must take to boost its seismic resilience.
To keep hopes of bouncing back quickly from a catastrophic 7 magnitude temblor along what is called the Wasatch fault, they said the Beehive State has to invest millions to protect its water and gas lines, roads, energy systems, telecommunications and jobs.
Two critical water systems — the Salt Lake and Jordan aqueducts — require at least $230 million in seismic improvements, although the commission concluded that investing another $125 million on top of what Utah already has spent would “close the funding gap.”
The group’s exiting road map calls for accelerating seismic retrofits, upgrades and replacements to vulnerable older buildings, especially public sites. Along with that, the panel urges the development and enforcement of building codes to promote better seismic integrity for new construction.
Keach said in an interview he favored development of an early warning system for the region, similar to networks for “shake alerts” in place in portions of California, Oregon and Washington.
Rather than a tool to predict quakes, Keach said, the system would instead give residents “a few seconds’ to 10 seconds’ notice when an earthquake is coming.”
That simple warning gap, he said, could help avert major disasters with utilities, transportation, medical facilities and other crucial sites, as well as give some residents a chance to find safety. Similar networks have cost up to $100 million in other states, but, Keach said, using research already produced by the defunct Seismic Safety Commission, “we think we can do it in Utah now for about $5 million.”
