The Earthquake Early Warning System now covers the entire West Coast

SAN FRANCISCO – In key years of achievement that has been established, the US Earthquake Early Warning System will now be able to issue alerts to cell phone users anywhere on the west coast of the continental United States starting Tuesday.

On May 4 at 8 a.m., Washington state mobile users finally gained access to the Earthquake Early Warning System portable alerts. The alert system for cell phone users was launched in Los Angeles in late 2018, and expanded to the rest of California in late 2019. In March, mobile phone users in Oregon began accessing earthquake early warning system alerts.

The announcement means that anywhere from the Canadian border to the Mexican border, cell phone users are entitled to receive early warnings that can give seconds to more than a minute to warn that tremors from a distant earthquake are on their way. The system works because the speed of current communication systems is faster than the speed at which the shock waves move across the earth.

“Now all three states will receive alerts on cell phones,” said Robert de Groot, a USGS seismologist and communications coordinator for ShakeAlert.

Since small earthquakes are more common than the strongest catastrophic earthquakes, if residents receive an alert, they will likely have a few seconds of warning before the tremor arrives from a distant earthquake. This can be enough time for people to drop, cover and hold, and for robotic systems to send alerts to hospitals to tell surgeons to remove scalpels from patients; Elevators to stop at the nearest floor; Trains begin to slow, reducing the risk of derailment.

An earthquake early warning system can give residents in the Pacific Northwest up to 80 seconds of warning before jolting from a magnitude 9 earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction, a monstrous fault zone hundreds of miles off the west coast, stretching under the Pacific Ocean Ocean from Cape Mendocino in western California to the west of Vancouver Island.

The Cascadia subduction zone was last torn apart in such an earthquake on January 26, 1700, sending catastrophic tsunamis not only to the Pacific Northwest, but thousands of miles to Japan.

The United States was relatively late in developing an earthquake early warning system. Systems like this have been around for years in Japan, Taiwan and Mexico, and development usually begins or accelerates after the catastrophic death toll from past earthquakes. However, the American system gradually began to gain bipartisan political support without a deadly earthquake that triggered action, with initial efforts beginning with a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation based in Palo Alto.

The reach of earthquake early warning mobile alerts expanded last year with the update of Google’s Android mobile operating system. Google is now transferring earthquake early warning alerts directly to Android cell phones in California, Oregon, and with the announcement on Tuesday, Washington.

(Apple has not entered into an agreement with the US Geological Survey to develop a similar system for iOS devices.)

Alerts can also come through the Wireless Emergency Alert System, which sends text message alerts similar to the Amber Alert to alert mobile phone users to a kidnapped child. However, these wireless emergency alerts are generally seen as slower than receiving alerts through an app.

In California and Oregon, smartphone users can also download free apps to get earthquake early warning alerts. MyShake, developed by the University of California, Berkeley, warns users about detecting an earthquake and asks them to take precautionary measures. De Groot said QuakeAlertUSA, developed by Santa Monica-based Early Warning Labs, offers some additional tools: a countdown to when the vibration arrives, and also note the expected vibration intensity.

The City of Los Angeles once had a mobile app for its earthquake early warning system, ShakeAlertLA, which was the first of its kind. But it was discontinued at the end of last year, and city officials recommended that people download the MyShake app.

It’s okay to download more than one earthquake early warning app, de Groot said. “It’s good to have more than one alert, because it kind of works as a backup,” he said.

The Earthquake Early Warning System got some experience in Los Angeles County last September when a 4.5 magnitude earthquake struck South El Monte. QuakeAlertUSA gave an alarm to De Groot, in western Los Angeles, just as the vibration started at its location, and some users far away from the epicenter – in the western San Fernando Valley – reported a few seconds before the vibration arrived. De Groot said an alert had been sent to 2.2 million Android devices.

In late 2019, the Earthquake Early Warning System sent its first public warning, warning more than 40 people from shaking – of a magnitude 4.3 earthquake in a remote mountainous area between the Central Coast and the San Joaquin Valley.

For the Earthquake Early Warning System to send an alert to mobile applications in a specific area, an earthquake must be recorded as having a magnitude of at least 4.5 and be expected to produce “weak vibration” – the kind that feels indoors and can feel like a truck that is driving Next to her. It is known as Level 3 vibration on the modified Mercalli density scale.

The magnitude of the earthquake and the expected vibration intensity should be stronger before sending the earthquake early warning through the Amber Alert wireless emergency alert text message system. These alerts can only be triggered when earthquakes of at least 5 magnitude occur, and sent to areas that are expected to experience a “slight vibration” that most people will feel inside, and dishes, windows and doors rattle, and walls make cracking sounds like a heavy truck hitting Building. This is known as the intensity level 4 vibration of a modified Mercalli density meter.

Officials revised thresholds to trigger alerts for less powerful earthquakes and less severe tremors after many people in Los Angeles complained that the warning system did not issue a warning prior to the Ridgecrest earthquakes in 2019, the largest of which was 7.1 magnitude.

The US Geological Survey is still building a rural West Coast seismic-sensing system that will eventually make the alerts sound faster. About 70% of the seismic station network is complete, with full completion estimated by late 2025.

Officials are also working to improve the computer software system designed to quickly analyze incoming vibration. One of the drawbacks that emerged after a magnitude 9 earthquake in 2011, which unleashed a deadly tsunami across northeastern Japan, is that the seismic sensing system there initially reduced the final magnitude of the earthquake.

“Right now, the algorithms work really well – up to 8. This is the case in Japan,” said de Groot.

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