Entire US West Coast Now Covered By Earthquake Early Warning System (npr.org) 37
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Residents living on the West Coast don't know when the next earthquake will hit. But a new expansion of the U.S. earthquake early warning system gives 50 million people in California, Oregon -- and now Washington -- seconds to quickly get to safety whenever the next one hits. As of 8 a.m. Tuesday, cellphone users in California, Oregon and Washington should receive a mobile alert from the ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system when tremors are detected. Alerts are sent from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Wireless Emergency Alert system, third-party phone apps and other technologies.
The West Coast, the most earthquake-prone region in the U.S., is home to major fault lines that put the area at risk of devastating earthquakes. David Applegate, the acting director of the U.S. Geological Survey, said in a statement that "ShakeAlert can turn mere seconds into opportunities for people to take life-saving protective actions or for applications to trigger automated actions that protect critical infrastructure." The ShakeAlert system relies on sensor data from the USGS Advanced National Seismic System -- a collection of regional earthquake monitoring networks throughout the country. Alerts can come through the Wireless Emergency Alert system, which sends text-message alerts similar to Amber Alerts sent to cellphone users when a child is kidnapped. Cellphone users will get an alert only when an earthquake is magnitude 5 or higher.
The West Coast, the most earthquake-prone region in the U.S., is home to major fault lines that put the area at risk of devastating earthquakes. David Applegate, the acting director of the U.S. Geological Survey, said in a statement that "ShakeAlert can turn mere seconds into opportunities for people to take life-saving protective actions or for applications to trigger automated actions that protect critical infrastructure." The ShakeAlert system relies on sensor data from the USGS Advanced National Seismic System -- a collection of regional earthquake monitoring networks throughout the country. Alerts can come through the Wireless Emergency Alert system, which sends text-message alerts similar to Amber Alerts sent to cellphone users when a child is kidnapped. Cellphone users will get an alert only when an earthquake is magnitude 5 or higher.
ShakeAlert (Score:1)
Can I also get FriesAlert with that?
Re: (Score:3)
they'd just make a new Facebook and somehow make it worse.
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Seven daaaayyyssss... (Score:3)
Can we reprogram the app to play that sound clip cuz that would be hilarious?
Lower your expectations (Score:3)
Re:Lower your expectations (Score:5, Insightful)
Even a few seconds can be useful:
Re:Lower your expectations (Score:4, Informative)
All of the above and more. Trains can brake. Industrial valves can be turned. Anyone near furniture can drop/cover/hold (practice it if you live in an earthquake zone).
If your risk includes a subduction zone far offshore, like Alaska or Washington, there might be as much as a minute of warning.
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Students can get under their desks
Students, but not office workers? ;p
Re:Lower your expectations (Score:4, Interesting)
If you look at major earthquakes, the biggest damages and deaths rarely happen within 10 km of the epicenter. Take Loma Prieta for example -- San Francisco was devastated, but the epicenter was about 100 km away (an order of magnitude further than that 10 km) near Santa Cruz.
The biggest impact though should be in automation. You can prevent fires, prevent broken machinery, limit the duration and scope of your power outages, just by shutting things off before the shaking starts.
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Take Loma Prieta for example -- San Francisco was devastated
That's because a large part of San Francisco is built on landfill, and they suffered a liquefaction [wikipedia.org] event due to the shaking.
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10km from the epicenter is a tiny area, a major earthquake will have effects far beyond that. For example, here in the PNW we're waiting for a potential 9.0 Cascadia subduction zone quake that will be centered somewhere off the coast. Depending on exactly where it happens, the shockwaves will first be detected on Olympic peninsula about 100 miles from Seattle, or on Oregon coast 60 miles from Portland. The population centers will then have a bit of time before the shaking starts. Enough to grab your phone,
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Earthquakes are complex things. They move, as rock fractures and part of the fault moves, it shifts loads to another part of the fault, that could be under great strain and ready to fail, creating a larger series of movements, again shifting loads along the fault, creating additional points of failure and a longer series of quakes, that chain reaction of after tremors as loads along the fault shift about and the fault stabilises.
You need to be able to tell the strain of the entire fault to forecast outcome
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The earthquake - not talking about the resulting tsunami - that destroyed the Fukushima Nuclear plant, was something like 450 miles away. I mean the epicenter.
Some warning is good, but... (Score:3, Informative)
There will be a lot of comments here about timing and delays and coverage...
And they're all correct. It's just the laws of physics. And that's assuming your cell infrastructure is still intact.
I worked on this system, so I'm posting AC. It's an interesting problem from many perspectives, but in the end if the earthquake hits within a certain radius and it's big enough, there's not much to be done anyway. One interesting aspect I have burnt some brain cells on is the aftershock question. If you got a warning, even late about the first shock, it's still useful information because some aftershock activity can be better anticipated.
Except in WA (Score:2)
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Washington doesn't spend extra tax dollars for the Apple tax, so the iToy users get squashed? I call that a win/win scenario!
Side Effects (Score:2)
The first one that comes to mind is what happens in dense traffic? It would probably cause people to stop suddenly to avoid going onto a large bridge or into a tunnel. I can foresee massive pileups. If the quake isn't massively destructive there will be complaints. I hope this was taken into account.
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Accuracy? (Score:2)
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My wife grew up in Peru and went through an almost-8 quake in Cusco, she doesn't even get out of the chair for anything smaller than a 4.3
Same sound as Amber/Silver alerts? (Score:2)
If they use the same sound as the countless stream of Amber/Silver alerts, it'll probably get ignored. There's a serious case of "boy cry wolf" syndrome going on with this stuff. They really should make those a different sound. "Old guy gone missing" is not the same level of emergency as "OMG! Nuclear Attack!"
This is very useful (Score:3)
If you are carrying a heavy object down a stairway, climbing a ladder, or something like that it's good to have. But what phone vendors should do is have a special alarm that vibrates the phone a couple of times and then squeals "EARTHQUAKE ALERT!" or something like that. That would give someone enough time to put what they are carrying down, reposition themselves, get someone's help, or toss what they are carrying. If it's just a text, it may not get checked until it's too late.
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If it's anything like the system here in Japan, that's precisely what it does. There's a separate setting for government issued emergency alerts in Android / iOS, and there are various apps available that use push notifications and allow you to fine tune the settings. For example, I've disabled the government alerts (they kept waking me up at night because their alert threshold is too low) and use the Yahoo app instead because I can disable notifications for quakes that measure shindo 4 and below, and it al
YES! (Score:1)
Vibrate? (Score:2)
Cellphone users will get an alert only when an earthquake is magnitude 5 or higher.
Yeah, but if your phone is set to vibrate, how will you know the difference?
Obligatory... (Score:2)
Communists (Score:1)
I could have saved them money... (Score:2)
obligatory xkcd (Score:2)
As usual, Randall Munroe wrote about this years ago:
https://xkcd.com/723/ [xkcd.com]