Californians were warned in advance of the Kern County earthquake via an app – NBC Los Angeles

After a 5.2-magnitude earthquake struck Kern County on Tuesday, many Californians received warnings before dangerous shaking began thanks to the nation's first early warning system, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said.

The epicenter of the earthquake was in Lamont, California, but it was felt in many areas of Southern California.

The ShakeAlert early warning system, run by the USGS, detects earthquakes in California. The agency works with apps like MyShake that send alerts to phones.

The governor's office said the MyShake app has sent more than 517,000 alerts, and more Californians have received alerts thanks to a partnership between the state and Google, which has integrated the alert software into the Android mobile operating system.

Some users in Los Angeles received a warning 20 to 30 seconds before the shaking began on Tuesday, said Richard Allen of the University of California, Berkeley's seismological lab, which helps run MyShake.

“There’s always a small area around the epicenter where we can’t get the alert out fast enough to warn those people. But for people a little bit further out, there can be a lot of warning time,” Allen said. “Our goal for earthquake early warning is really just a few seconds, it’s a few seconds. When you get the alert, you need to be ready for the earthquake, get down, take cover, hold on.”

The earthquake early warning industry continues to evolve.

Residents in Southern California reported feeling a 5.2 magnitude earthquake that struck Kern County. Darsha Phillips reports for NBC 4 News at 11 p.m. Tuesday, August 6, 2024.

Josh Bashium is the founder and CEO of Early Warning Labs. The company works with places like hospitals, schools, and transportation teams. It uses ShakeAlert data to determine the intensity of an earthquake at a given location. If the earthquake exceeds a predetermined threshold, it sends out alerts that can do anything from slowing down trains to making announcements at school.

“We do ad hoc alerting in places where there’s no general alerting like Los Angeles,” Paschium said. “When an earthquake happens, our system does all the hard work. Well, how bad is it going to be in this Los Angeles Unified school? Well, if it’s over the threshold of the school where it might be dangerous for kids to play, the alert line stops and they hide under their desks and wait for the shaking to stop.”

One of their partners is LA Metro, and they have sensors in 27 different locations.

“For the Los Angeles Metro, at each of those 27 locations, we will actually calculate for each of them how bad the shaking is within one second, and then we will systematically activate either the audible notification or the mechanical responses to either happen or not happen (depending on the intensity of the earthquake at each location),” Paschi said.

The ShakeAlert team hopes that people, businesses, schools, and transportation will take advantage of all the technology available.

“People need to realize that they live in earthquake country,” said Robert DeGroot, ShakeAlert operations team leader.

“This isn’t the last time something like this happens. Anything that people can use, any tool they can add to their toolkit, to improve their safety, is really important.”

“Keep doing what you’ve always done. Get down to a safe place and wait if you feel shaken. Or if you get an alert, have your emergency gear ready for you. Over time, you’ll see the ShakeAlert app being used in more and more places over time,” he added.

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