A statewide drill involving an early warning earthquake alert system popped off on people’s cellphones seven hours earlier than planned and led to some early morning confusion early Thursday.
The ShakeAlert system is operated by the U.S. Geological Survey and is designed to detect earthquakes and estimate their locations, magnitudes and shaking intensities.
As part of the planned Great California ShakeOut earthquake drill, the ShakeAlert system was supposed to push notifications to people’s cellphones at 10:19 a.m. but instead issued an alert at 3:19 a.m.
The early-morning snafu was the apparent result of some kind of time-zone mix-up, USGS officials announced on social media.
“You might have gotten a test alert from the @MyShakeApp early today,” USGS officials said. “We acknowledge that no one wants to get a test message this early and we are working with our #ShakeAlert technical partner to determine what happened.”
It was the second day in a row that the alert system caused some confusion.
On Wednesday, it pushed notifications out on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Wireless Emergency Alert system about a large 5.7-magnitude quake near Isleton in Sacramento County and then quickly revised that to a much smaller 4.2-magnitude shaker.
“During this event those receiving alerts on their phones may have felt little or no shaking,” USGS officials said in a statement posted on the agency’s website. “Successful earthquake early warning is a balance between speed and accuracy with a goal to maximize public safety.”
Way to go! And last week we had Joe Biden’s presidential alert beeping on our cell .phones.
I don’t think I’ll trust it if we were ever being attacked.
3:19 a.m. Classic
Want something screwed up let guberment do it.
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“The most terrifying words in the English language are:
I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
–Ronald Reagan
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Drop, Cover, Hold On . . . . . . . . no way !
I’m not gettin’ outta the recliner.
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Fail.
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Because some carbon-based biological unit set the alarm based on Universal time instead of Pacific, the test went off 7 hours early. That person should be fired.
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Is the SF Bay Area prepared for a disaster? I’d say emphatically, NO!
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All times on USGS are UTC, which I assume is the same as GMT. You would think the kind of whiz kids that can design a system like this could build in an automatic timezone modifier.
My cell phone is never on. Some people can’t live without one. I only got a smartphone in advance of a cross country road trip a couple of years ago just in case it was needed (and because pay phones are history). They are good to have in an emergency, but if an earthquake were to occur I would probably notice the fact that the ground was moving.
One thing on the cell I do find useful is the flashlight so I can read paper roadmaps.
Old school and still functioning.
Government at its FINEST!
Hmmm…What earthquake warning at 3:19am ? I didn’t receive it.
iF YOU ARE ON THE TOILET YOU CANNOT STOP, DROP AND COVER…..SO JUST FORGET ABOUT IT.
the imminent warning is worse than the actual quake. as far as anxiety goes….Not everyone is glued to their cell
phone.
I think that startling warning attention signal would be helpful in assisting the “drop” instruction for those on the toidy.
@Dr
Hahahaha!
Sure. Blame it on one of ‘their partners’. Someone gonna get fired for not realizing that the world doesn’t revolve around California.
This is what the public schools and probably a $150,000 education gets you.
Welcome to adulting.
You know darn well no one will get fired for this f-up.
“The best minds are not in government.
If any were, business would steal them away.”
–Ronald Reagan
.. can’t even get an EQ test right… can’t trust it now….my cell went off at 3:19am … not others in my house …. Newsom plan this one too?
I didn’t get the 3:19 AM warning either on either phone. For those few who don’t understand time zones 3:19 AM PDT is 10:19 AM UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). If you haven’t heard of UTC it is the time standard used on your computers, phones and other things with an local time zone adjustment (currently -7:00 hours). IOW, we are 7 hours behind UTC during PDT and 8 during PST. UTC for 10:16 AM PDT would be simply 17:19 UTC which is also 24 hour time.
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UTC is like GMT but doesn’t observe DST time so it is a year around constant. Strange thing is that the software for this doesn’t do the adjustment automatically. Wonder who (or where) developed it?
The problem is, by the time the alert gets to phones the EQ is done. So it is a moot alert. they just want to invade a persons private life by invading personal phones. If it was a tornado or hurricane, I can understand the alert. It give a warning in time to at least find a safe place. Not in the case of EQ’s. They are done before the alert comes. So stop with the EQ alerts on my phone