Megan Udinski, FISM News
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A new app called MyShake alerts residents of California, Oregon, or Washington seconds before an earthquake is felt. San Francisco Bay Area residents experienced this for real on Tuesday when a magnitude 5.1 earthquake hit the area. This is the largest earthquake to hit the area since the 2014 Napa earthquake, whose magnitude was 6.0 and caused massive destruction to the region.
California utilizes the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) ShakeAlert system, which sends a text message alert to approximately 2.1 million cell phones around the time of an earthquake according to Robert de Groot, part of the ShakeAlert operations team. Additionally, he commented, “Both earthquakes have demonstrated that we can get out a massive number of alerts in a short period of time,” referring to the Tuesday earthquake as well as a Sep. 13 quake of 4.4 magnitude.
The alert system is extremely beneficial, but more data needs to be collected regarding the amount of time between receiving the alert and when tremors were felt.
The governor’s office reported that the majority of those who received alerts from the ShakeAlert system had Android phones, which have a built-in early-warning alert in the operating system.
The free MyShake app also warned 100,000 residents on Tuesday. The app was developed by UC Berkeley and works on both iOS and Android phones. Several users tweeted their experience on Tuesday with alerts ranging from 2 seconds to 10 seconds. Some even indicated enough time between the alert and the actual tremors that they assumed it was a drill.
According to USGS the amount of time between an alert and feeling the earthquake is dependent on how close someone is to the epicenter. In this case, the epicenter was located in the remote Diablo Range, about 2½ miles southwest of the Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton. For those within a 10-mile radius it is unlikely they would get any warning.
For instance, someone in Oakland reported a 10-second warning while someone in Pleasant Hill only got a 5-second warning, and the SoCal Animal Response in Hollister got about a 3-second alert.
For the app to be most effective it is suggested to enable location services at all times and to turn off the setting that automatically uninstalls unused apps. The “HomeBase” option in the app allows users to assign a particular location they would like the 6-mile warning radius to be set to should they desire to turn off location services.
After the Tuesday earthquake, the MyShake app was downloaded an additional 108,000 times, a single-day record for app downloads.