These labs have prepared for a big earthquake — will it be enough?

Earlier this month, Japan’s Meteorological Agency issued its first-ever ‘megaquake’ alert, advising that the risk of a large earthquake along the Pacific coast was higher than usual. The warning came after an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.1 on 8 August.
The agency lifted the warning a week later, after no major change in seismic activity was detected. But the alert was another reminder for scientists who live in Japan and other seismic zones of the constant threat that an earthquake could disrupt — or even destroy — their research. So how do they safeguard their laboratories? Nature spoke to seven researchers about their preparations and whether those are enough.
When the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami hit in March 2011, Masahiro Terada, an organic chemist at Tohoku University in Sendai, found broken glass scattered across his lab, fume hoods weighing 400 kilograms metres away from their usual position and water from broken pipes flooding the space. The smell of organic solvents filled the lab and a fire had broken out in the reagent storage room. Terada lost ten years’ worth of synthesized compounds.
These days, Terada anchors large furniture and equipment directly to the concrete wall and stores reagents in cushioned mesh containers.
Each year, biochemist Hideki Tatsukawa is securing more and more of his lab’s equipment at Nagoya University in Japan, under the institute’s guidance. The university is located in a region that has a more than 70% likelihood of a severe earthquake in the next 30 years, according to the Japanese government. Tatsukawa anchors any equipment taller than one metre, such as refrigerators, with vertical bands to the floor to prevent them from toppling or jumping during a quake.
Tying down equipment is crucial for saving lives and preventing secondary disasters, such as broken gas pipes or exposed electrical wiring that could spark a fire, says Koji Fukuoka, a risk-management researcher formerly at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan. Fires only take two minutes to reach the ceiling in most Japanese buildings, he says, so “removing potential causes of fire needs to be one of the top priorities in a lab setting”. Fukuoka recommends that labs have two evacuation routes in case one of them becomes compromised.
Damage to equipment during earthquakes can also result in considerable financial losses. During the 2011 quake, damage to research instruments cost Tohoku University 26.9 billion yen (US$180 million). In the wake of that earthquake, the university established a Disaster Management Promotion Office, which issues technical guidelines on how to secure equipment depending which floor of the building they are on. For instance, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy instruments should be installed on the ground floor and on top of a base isolation stand, which isolates the equipment from the floor so that it moves independently of the shaking ground. NMR instruments can explode because the helium liquid they contain becomes a gas when the equipment is broken and might deplete rooms of oxygen.
“But, to our knowledge, these learnings haven’t been shared across universities systematically,” says Takeshi Sato, a disaster-prevention scientist at Tohoku University. Fukuoka also notes that, without expert advice and dissemination of knowledge, each lab’s precautions might not be enough in the event of very strong shaking.
One of the main concerns for Kentaro Noma, a neurobiologist at Nagoya University, is losing the more than 600 unique strains of nematode worm (Caenorhabditis elegans) that he has produced over the course of his career so he could study the relationship between genetics and the ageing of neurons. “Losing the strains not only compromises my own work, but research reproducibility for the wider scientific community,” he says.
In addition to the stocks that Noma currently uses for his research, he maintains two backup collections: one in a freezer cooled to −80 °C kept in his lab and another stored in liquid nitrogen, also in the lab. The freezer has a backup power generator that runs on gasoline; the collection stored in liquid nitrogen serves as an extra safeguard in case of an extreme disaster, when there is no access to fuel. “It’s not perfect, but the liquid-nitrogen freezer buys us an extra 1–2 weeks to devise longer-term measures,” he says.
Tatsukawa, who studies the functions of proteins in model organisms, preserves genetically engineered lines of mice and medaka fish (Oryzias latipes) by extracting sperm, mixing the samples with a preservation solution and freezing them in liquid nitrogen. The cryogenically preserved samples can be thawed, and female animals can be artificially inseminated to restart the line.
Similar precautions are being taken by scientists at the University of California in the San Francisco Bay Area, which sits directly on top of the Hayward Fault. There is a more than 30% chance of an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7 or higher occurring on the fault by 2043.
Dirk Hockemeyer, a cell biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, also cryogenically preserves his stem-cell lines in liquid nitrogen, a standard procedure in his field. He has more than 25,000 vials of cell lines produced by the 50 researchers that have worked in his lab over the past 10 years. As a preventative measure, Hockemeyer keeps duplicates of valuable cell lines in liquid nitrogen in different buildings in case one collapses.
For scientists who work with animals, there are many factors to consider in earthquake preparation. In Japan, facilities with primates typically have two-tiered walls so that if one layer is destroyed, the other keeps the animals contained, says Ikuma Adachi, a primatologist at Kyoto University in Inuyama. Kyoto University’s Center for Human Evolution Modeling Research houses 11 chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and 800 macaques (Macaca sp.). “Primates are very sensitive to changes in the environment and will become anxious during disasters,” he says. Securing water for them to drink and maintaining hygienic conditions for the animals to live in is also crucial, says Adachi.
“The best we can do is to prepare measures and protocols in advance so that it guides decision-making during emotionally challenging times,” he says.