MyShake mobile app provides early warning for earthquakes
Coachella Valley residents weren't able to feel the shaking from yesterday's magnitude-5.2 earthquake that struck roughly 20 miles from Bakersfield.
But some of the people who were affected received an early warning from the MyShake mobile app. The app, which is created by the University of California, Berkeley, began development in 2011.
The university partners with CalTech and the United States Geological Survey (USGS). They're also funded by the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), which allows the MyShake app to be available for free on mobile devices.
Richard Allen is the Director for UC Berkeley's Seismology Lab and oversees the MyShake program. He likens the ability to warn people of an earthquake ahead of time to sorcery: "I mean, it's magic. I mean, it's really quite remarkable. That is the reaction that most people have when they get that first alert is they get a notification on their phone.”
In reality, a network of sensors from the USGS, called ShakeAlert sensors, detect earthquakes and rapidly notify users as soon as shaking is detected.
"When an earthquake starts, it starts underground at some point. And so if we have sensors that are closer to the earthquake than an individual user is, we can detect that earthquake before people feel the shaking," Allen explains.
Many of the Coachella Valley residents I spoke to today, though, either hadn't heard about the app or were still yet to try it.
Allen says the benefits of the MyShake app isn't limited to earthquake alerts; the data that is collected from users' phones helps with research, too. "You're actually contributing to our research efforts to better understand earthquakes in the future. So there's a little bit of giving, a little bit of take and people seem to really appreciate that," Allen says.
Regardless of data, though, Allen admits seismologists like himself are unable to predict when the next big earthquake is. Instead, he urges the public to advocate for seismically safe buildings.
"I fully expect, unfortunately, there will be a major damaging earthquake in California in my lifetime," Allen cautions. "We share that responsibility about thinking about the buildings that we live and work in and pushing to make sure that they are safe, seismically safe. They won't collapse during the course of the earthquake because it's collapsed buildings that kill people. It's not the earthquake, it's the buildings."
