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Earthquake app test at 3:19 a.m. surprises West Coast users

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Some West Coast residents were jolted awake Thursday when they received a seismic alert test that was sent to their cellphones at 3:19 a.m. due to a time zone mix-up, the agency said. United States Geological Survey.

The loud alerts were sent to people who use MyShake, an earthquake early warning app, said Robert-Michael de Groot, a spokesman for ShakeAlert, the U.S. Geological Survey system that powers the ‘application.

Mr de Groot did not know how many users received the alert, but he said the app had been downloaded 1.4 million times and the alarm could have reached more than a million people. The app is aimed at residents of California, Oregon and Washington, but alerts can also be sent to other users, he said.

MyShake had planned to send a test alert to its users in California, Oregon and Washington on Thursday for a fictitious earthquake in San Francisco at 10:19 a.m. Pacific Time, according to its website. Instead, app users received the warning at 3:19 a.m. Pacific Time, which is equivalent to 10:19 a.m. Coordinated Universal Time. The warning text said the alert was sent at 10:19 UTC

Some people who received the alert were awakened by a recorded voice saying, “This is a test,” according to social media posts.

MyShake was developed by the University of California, Berkeley.

Angie Lux, an Earthquake Early Warning Project scientist at Berkeley Seismology Lab, said the error would not affect MyShake’s real-time alert system and was an accidental reminder that earthquakes earth can occur at any time.

“We recognize that it was no fun being woken up at 3 a.m. and we apologize for that,” Dr. Lux said.

Later Thursday, another test alert was sent at 10:19 a.m., as scheduled.

The app is powered by ShakeAlert, a system run by the US Geological Survey that detects earthquakes and estimates areas that could experience strong shaking in order to alert the public in an effort to minimize damage.

ShakeAlert is used in California, Oregon, and Washington, the states with the greatest number of people at risk of very strong ground shaking from earthquakes. Governments can send ShakeAlert information to televisions, phones and radios. Some private apps, such as MyShake, partner with ShakeAlert to deliver warnings.

These alerts aim to give users a few seconds of warning to take shelter and give organizations more time to take action to protect people and critical equipment, by slowing down trains or issuing public announcements , For example.

ShakeAlert warnings were first sent to cell phones in California in 2019 and in Oregon and Washington in 2021.

Mr. de Groot said ShakeAlert was in a “state of constant improvement” and that each event taught the U.S. Geological Survey something new about how to improve the early warning system.

“Certainly I think the lesson that needed to be learned was learned by those who are running this at 3:20 in the morning,” Mr de Groot said.

In the United States, about 143 million people live in places likely to be shaken by a potentially damaging earthquake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

To prepare for possible earthquakes, a national seismic exercise, The Great ShakeOut, takes place every year, this year on Thursday. Families, schools, businesses and other organizations were encouraged to practice what to do during an earthquake.

In Northern California, there was a real opportunity for earthquake preparedness Wednesday morning, when the ShakeAlert system was activated after an earthquake in Sacramento County, triggering an alert. The US Geological Survey had originally registered The earthquake exceeded a magnitude 5, triggering the alert, but was later downgraded to a magnitude 4.2.

As emergency management officials across the country tested new technologies to better warn people of potential disasters, occasional mistakes were made.

In April, the Florida Division of Emergency Management apologized after sending a shrill alarm to cell phones across the state at 4:45 a.m. after a test of the emergency alert system.

In January 2018, residents of Hawaii received a false alert about an incoming ballistic missile, and it took the state about 38 minutes to send out another alert saying the first one was a mistake. The false alert was sent by a worker with a long history of poor performance who believed the state was facing a real threat, the Federal Communications Commission and Hawaii officials said.



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