The U.S. stopped funding the Seismic Monitoring Center in Georgia

The U.S. has indefinitely suspended funding for the Seismic Monitoring Center in Georgia, Director Teya Godoladze said.

“I write briefly: America has suspended funding for the Seismic Monitoring Center. After the Lugar lab, it was expected that this was inevitable,” Godoladze wrote on social media.

The U.S. announced this summer that it was suspending its aid program to Georgia in the amount of more than $95 million. The reasons for the decision were given as “anti-democratic actions and false statements of the Georgian government, which do not meet the norms of membership in the EU and NATO.”

The Georgian government said it did not know what the money was intended for.

The scope and specific areas affected by the suspension of funding are gradually becoming known.

Godoladze writes that the U.S. has been funding seismic and geodetic monitoring projects for Georgia for 25 years; it has helped gather and retain a highly qualified team of specialists and purchase expensive equipment.

“We acquired the most expensive equipment that was impossible to purchase with government funding. During the famous Tbilisi earthquake of 2002, there was not a single digital seismic station in the country. We had only analog, outdated seismic stations in Tbilisi and Akhalkalaki, which did not even allow us to determine the epicenter of the earthquake,” the Seismocenter director said in a statement.

Godoladze notes that the situation has changed over the past years thanks to U.S. assistance and now the Georgian Seismic Center has become part of the world seismic monitoring.

The Center's scientific team consists of 80 employees who monitor 49 seismic stations throughout Georgia and up to 160 permanent and temporary geodetic stations.

Most recently, the Center has been working on updating seismic hazard maps, a project funded by the U.S. It is unknown at this time if the work will be able to continue.

“We are currently looking for ways to salvage what we have built over the years with our American partners. Thank you to our American colleagues and the American people for supporting Georgia. We hope that this is temporary and the situation will not become irreversibly destructive,” Godoladze writes.

Reprinted from https://www.newsgeorgia.ge/