Earthquakes are one of the hardest disasters to respond to, because unlike hurricanes and floods, they cannot be predicted. However, a new warning system could alert residents that the ground will begin shaking in 10 to 15 seconds.

Although that doesn’t sound like a lot of time, it’s long enough for people to leave a hazardous environment; technology to go into safe mode or save an important document; elevators to stop at the next floor and open their doors; and trains to decelerate.

According to an article by Emergency Management, seismologists and the U.S. Geological Survey are currently working to provide California with a publicly available early warning earthquake system.

“The idea is (to) detect the beginnings of the earthquake, and then rapidly assess the magnitude that earthquake poses, and provide a warning to people before the shaking starts,” Richard Allen, seismology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said. “We’re talking about very short periods of time – a few seconds to a few tens of seconds.”

California isn’t the first place to develop such a system, as the Japan Meteorological Agency launched the most advanced early warning system to date during 2007. That system provides alerts through media outlets and Internet applications. Mexico City, Turkey, Taiwan and Romania also have established similar systems.

The early warning systems work by detecting primary waves, or the first tremors of an earthquake that travel about 1 to 5 mph, before the secondary waves begin causing damage. As the secondary waves move more slowly, people would have more time to take precautions following the alert.

The California project began in 2006 when the USGS provided $900,000 in funding to take the algorithms that various groups had developed for earthquake prediction and use them on real-time seismic systems. Three of those algorithms consistently detected earthquakes and predicted the two largest quakes in the state during the three-year test period.

Another two-year testing phase began in 2009 when the USGS provided $1.2 million in funding, which is being used to develop the California Integrated Seismic Network ShakeAlert System a prototype system that provides a warning to a small group of users.

U.S. News & World Report recently named emergency management specialists to its list of the 50 best careers for this year. Emergency management specialists are the people who work behind the scenes to make it possible for firefighters and police to respond to a situation.

They can be responsible for developing disaster response plans, training other people in an organization in disaster and emergency preparedness, and coordinating with various emergency personnel to ensure that emergency contingencies are covered.

Many emergency management specialists work in the public sector with the military, law enforcement and state and local governments. However, employers also can include private-sector and nonprofit companies in sensitive lines of work, such as hospitals, colleges and universities, and community relief organizations.

Most of the time, emergency management specialists work in an office and spend the majority of their time communicating with various people. While the job is not very stressful on a day-to-day basis, it can be one of the most stressful if an emergency or disaster occurs.

Almost all employers require applicants to have a bachelor’s degree, and many, especially in the public sector, require candidates to be certified in the National Incident Management System, a disaster response system designed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The occupation has a positive outlook, with the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics predicting employment to increase by 2,800 jobs, or 22 percent, from 2008 to 2018.

Currently, the bottom 10 percent of emergency management specialists earn less than $25,000 per year, while the top 10 percent earn more than $80,000 per year. The median annual salary during 2008 was $50,460, with California, Massachusetts and Rhode Island paying the highest salaries.