Not A Good Start For "Shake Alert".

[BigDon]

So three days ago peeps were boasting that everybody on the West Coast now has access to an earthquake warning system "Shake Alert".

15 minutes ago they sent out a false alarm- A level 6 a mere 170 miles away and no hint of motion here.

USGS doesn't know about any 6 either.

Bad form Shake Alert, bad form.

 

[berkeman]

I put it on my phone about 6 months ago, but removed it the same day. It kept my phone's "Location" feature in high-power GPS mode, which drained my battery too fast for my taste. I didn't see an option to set it to my normal "battery saving" mode, which is fairly accurate for the purposes of earthquake alerts, IMO.

 

[BigDon]

Wow.

Thank you very much Mr. Berkman. I was wondering about my battery issues. Now I know.

(Still going to need one of my kids to fix it. Grandpa and the VCR syndrome.)

 

[berkeman]

Looks like the false alarm happened because only one monitoring station was in position to see it quickly, and it generated the false alarm. Normally there are several monitoring stations nearby, and a verification is carried out by the system before sending the alert out. The system is still in its growth phase...

https://abc7news.com/a-look-into-sh...ake-notification-rattles-residents-/10595222/

"One of the critical pieces of information with any earthquake is to know where it's located," said Robert de Groot, USGS ShakeAlert national coordinator. "When you know about where the earthquake is located, then you can get a sense of how the region around it is going to shake."

In this case, the system, which uses underground sensors to detect an earthquake, actually misread where the quake was located because there was only one station in the area. As a result, the quake ended up being closer to Truckee and turned out to only be a 4.7 on the scale. Some Bay Area residents were notified to take cover because the system thought the quake would be bigger.