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USGS earthquake warning system expands to cover entire West Coast
Washington residents will now receive mobile alerts about impending shaking.
California's statewide Earthquake Early Warning system sent its first alert
Two months after expanding across California, the state's Earthquake Early Warning system sent out its first real alert, notifying residents of shaking in Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties, along the San Andreas fault. While the quake eventually registered at 4.3 on the Modified Mercali scale, the USGS data shows it was initially estimated at 4.8, high enough to warrant an alert.
California's Earthquake Early Warning system rolls out statewide
As expected, today California governor Gavin Newsom announced the launch of a statewide Earthquake Early Warning System. Based on reports from sensors embedded in the ground across the state, it can detect tremors and deliver warnings to mobile phones using the Wireless Emergency Alert system or the MyShake app (Android, iOS). This system is launching on the 30th anniversary of the Loma Prieta quake in 1989, and if this system had existed then, people attending the World Series game at Candlestick could've been notified up to 15 seconds before the quake's tremors actually reached them.
California's statewide earthquake alert system launches Thursday
In Mexico and Japan, warning systems that send out alerts for seismic events have been in place for years, but a similar setup for California has been long-delayed. Finally, on Thursday the first statewide Earthquake Early Warning System will go online. Until now, large-scale alerts have only been available in LA County, where they haven't been triggered yet. As the LA Times reports, Thursday is the 30th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake, where energy from a tremor under the Santa Cruz mountains took up to 35 seconds to reach the northern edge of San Francisco. While the ShakeAlert system California will rely on can't predict earthquakes, it can feel them thanks to monitoring stations and send out messages using the MyShake app (click here to install of Android or iOS) or Wireless Emergency Alerts (like an AMBER Alert) that can give people time to prepare before the quake's energy reaches them.
Android app turns your phone into an earthquake detector
Your smartphone can already warn you about earthquakes. UC Berkeley, however, is going one step further: it wants your phone to help detect those quakes. The school has released an Android app, MyShake, that uses your phone's motion sensors to detect the telltale signs of tremors and combine that with the data from every other user. For all intents and purposes, you become part of a crowdsourced seismic station network -- you can confirm a quake just by leaving your phone turned on. That could be a big help when there aren't enough fixed stations to trigger an alert through conventional apps.
