Millions in Mexico City use the SkyAlert earthquake warning app

Shortly after 1pm on September 19, 2017, Alejandra Vera Izquierdo suddenly felt that her building in the Xochimilco neighborhood of southern Mexico City began to shake violently for about 20 seconds. She was not physically hurt in the magnitude 7.1 quake, but she was furious: She claimed that the city’s earthquake alert, which would have given her enough time to get out of the building, was not heard on any of the nearby loudspeakers.

Fearing the deadly effects of this earthquake and fearing that the city’s warning system might fail again, she downloads SkyAlert, an earthquake warning app. Almost six years later, Vera Izquierdo is still counting on her. She told the rest of the world how, in April 2019, when a less severe earthquake struck, “SkyAlert warned me several seconds before the city alert, which helped me get out of the building sooner.”

Mexico City’s earthquake warning system, which has been fully operational since the early 1990s, is considered by some residents to be increasingly defective. Since 2017, the seismic alert system, called SAS, has triggered false alarms, failed to work in certain neighborhoods, or ended up not triggering a citywide alert at all during an earthquake. For developers of private applications, though, these issues presented an opportunity. Many of them have created their own mobile earthquake warning apps, of which SkyAlert is the most popular. With fewer than 7 million users, according to the company’s own numbers, SkyAlert is also the only earthquake alert app legally allowed to operate in Mexico.

Despite their weaknesses, earthquake alert apps have gained the trust of people in Mexico City. Users have told Rest of World that they consider the apps better than the government’s official alert system for a variety of reasons, such as portability and the ability to use them outside of Mexico City. “You never know when your amplifiers are going to fail,” Vera Izquierdo told the rest of the world. “I know SkyAlert will ring very loudly on the phone next to me, so I can’t miss it.”

Most of Mexico is located in a seismically active zone, and the densely populated capital is more prone to earthquakes than many other cities. SAS is run by a non-profit organization called CIRES, created in 1986 in the aftermath of the earthquake that devastated the city the year before.

For years, SAS has been hailed as a life-saving innovation by experts and locals alike. It is the first of its kind worldwide. Its 97 sensors are distributed in open areas and linked to a radio transmitter. If at least two sensors detect a tremor of magnitude greater than 5.5 on the Richter scale no more than 350 kilometers from the city, the radio wave alert — which travels faster than seismic waves, according to SAS — will trigger an alarm in Mexico City. At least 50 seconds before the shaking starts, depending on how close to the city the epicenter is. In 2015, the distinctive siren sounded, sounding the earthquake alarm from nearly 14,000 loudspeakers linked to the monitoring system everywhere in the city.

The rest of the world reached out to CIRES but received no response.

The SkyAlert home screen displays the most recent seismic activity.

In 2011, Álvaro Velasco and Alejandro Canto founded SkyAlert to warn users of upcoming earthquakes through their phones. Currently, the app’s warning system works with its own network of more than 120 internet-connected sensors. They cover about 80% of the country’s seismic zones, including the Pacific coast, “and this is important because not only Mexico City is highly susceptible to earthquakes,” Francisco Catala, SkyAlert’s chief technology officer, tells Rest of the World.

Unlike SAS sensors located atop radio towers, each SkyAlert sensor is encased in a plastic box and mounted on the ground, inside buildings such as schools or hotels. When the sensors identify the early tremors of an earthquake of any intensity, they immediately trigger the app’s alarm system.

The app sends a loud push notification and a sound announces, “Earthquake detected,” followed by its estimated intensity—weak, moderate, strong, violent, or severe. All earthquakes above the “strong” category trigger the alarm automatically. Users can configure the types of earthquakes they want to receive notifications for. They can also choose whether they want their phone to vibrate or light up when the alarm goes off. Katalla said that, depending on how far the epicenter is from a particular city, the warning may reach a user up to 120 seconds before it strikes.

The app has its limitations. Since its sensors are online, no phone not connected to mobile data or Wi-Fi will be alerted. This is in addition to the early struggles that panic the company. When SkyAlert was first launched, it was based on the SAS system. According to Velasco, the company’s CEO, the app sent an alarm that turned out to be false — not only confusing users, but making them angry and anxious. The company has now launched its own independent sensor network – larger than the SAS network.

“If there’s one notification on my phone that I don’t ignore, it’s definitely the one that sends information about the earthquake.”

SkyAlert rose to prominence after the devastation of the 2017 earthquake. On that day, the app’s warning went off about 12 seconds before the SAS alert. The company said that SkyAlert was the most downloaded app on the Apple App Store in Mexico over the next three days. Catala told the rest of the world that she had more than 1 million downloads on Android devices after five days. Before the quake, it had just over 100,000 active users; It now has more than 6 million, most of them in Mexico City. Users of the app have told Rest of World that they consider it a suitable replacement or even a supplement to the city’s alarm.

SkyAlert notifications during an earthquake.

“It’s not like I don’t trust the city’s alarm, but I think SkyAlert is much easier,” Mexico City resident Emmanuel García Gama told the rest of the world. He’s one of about a million users who have paid for a SkyAlert subscription, which costs as little as 249 pesos (just over $14) a year. The app is free to use, but a subscription allows users to get more data on the earthquake, including its estimated time of arrival – rather than just a warning.

SkyAlert also makes money by powering earthquake alarm systems for buildings. City authorities mandate that all public buildings have a CIRES-powered alarm, but many purchase an additional alarm system, provided by companies such as SkyAlert. For example, all WeWork buildings in Mexico City have an alarm operated by SkyAlert, one WeWork employee told Rest of World, asking not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak for the company. Catalá said that about 60% of SkyAlert’s revenue comes from selling its products to businesses rather than to individual app users.

In the past six years, more earthquake alert apps have appeared, though only SkyAlert is legally approved to operate in Mexico. Some users of Rest of the World said they switched from SkyAlert to other apps, such as SASSLA, because they claimed SkyAlert wasn’t working properly — it warned them of very mild earthquakes far from their location, but didn’t send an alert when the quake was actually deadly.

Velasco told the rest of the world that the company is working to improve these shortcomings, sometimes making up for a missed alert by sending users a follow-up message with additional information.

In recent weeks, Mexico City has experienced a series of strong but powerful “mini-earthquakes”. Neither SAS nor SkyAlert could send an early warning to these, since they originated within the city, far from where each of their sensor networks were installed. Mexico City-based SkyAlert user Nadim Matoc told the rest of the world that he’s nonetheless been particularly interested in the app since then. Even when it doesn’t send a warning, it provides information about what happened.

“If there’s one notification on my phone that I don’t ignore, it’s definitely the one that sends information about the earthquake,” he said.

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