Bill Steele

Bill Steele has directed the Educational Outreach and Communications Program for the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN) at the University of Washington, since 1993. He works closely with news reporters and filmmakers to provide hazards information and coordinate scientist involvement in development accurate and interesting news reports and documentaries. Bill also supports interdisciplinary and interagency cooperation between university, government agencies, and private sector organizations to identify earthquake and volcanic hazards, community vulnerabilities, and mitigation opportunities.

Bill has been recently touring the PNW introducing the ShakeAlert, West Coast Earthquake Early Warning Project (EEW) to businesses, utilities and public agencies. He collaborates with companies and public agencies to identify opportunities to implement automated loss reduction actions triggered by ShakeAlerts. Bill manages pilot projects and Technical Assistance Agreements on behalf of the USGS Washington State. He is also seeking to document how EEW can be used to reduce injuries and economic losses during an earthquake and speed recovery. Bill assisted the Whitehouse Office of Science and Technology Policy in the development of the Whitehouse Earthquake Resilience Summit in February 2016 which focused on the promise of the ShakeAlert system.

Bill has also recently helped organize a FEMA Region X volcano risk workshop with the UW Institute Hazard Mitigation and Research and FEMA Region X. This workshop brought together stakeholders from throughout Region X to review new educational materials on volcano hazards and community vulnerabilities and introduced new info sheets on 13 high risk volcanos in Alaska, Washington, and Oregon.

Bill serves on a number of NGO boards including CPARM (Contingency Planners and Recovery Managers), and he is founding member of CREW (the Cascadia Region Earthquake Workgroup). He lives with his wife Mea in the University district where they are tending their gardens and celebrating grandparenthood.