[HN Gopher] Seconds before a 6.2 earthquake rattled California, ... ___________________________________________________________________ Seconds before a 6.2 earthquake rattled California, phones got a warning Author : sizzle Score : 218 points Date : 2021-12-22 17:19 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com) | jorgeudajer wrote: | sva_ wrote: | I'm currently on my first trip to the US, and was in Napa Valley | at the time of that earthquake. I (sadly) didn't feel anything. | | It probably sounds weird, but I wish to experience a (light) | earthquake sometime. The idea of the ground itself shaking seems | absolutely alien to me. | boringg wrote: | Sub 4.2 earthquakes feel like a truck rumbling by your house | (if you have an old house/apartment). I used to live on a busy | street in SF and whenever there was an earthquake it was always | ... was that a large truck or an earthquake. Only when it keep | rattling did it really differentiate. | minitoar wrote: | It's more like everything is shaking. The fact that the source | is the ground is not obvious in the moment. | yesco wrote: | I experienced my first and only earthquake (5.8 magnitude) | while visiting the holocaust museum in Washington DC. It was | very out of the ordinary for the region and so as strange as it | sounds, myself, my family and some other people present all | thought the shaking was a part of the exhibit and simply | carried on.... only for a security guard to come running in | several minutes later to kick us out of the building. | | I think earthquakes can by easy to miss sometimes for those | unused to them because they feel so mundane. Like everyone's | experienced a certain degree of shaking before, heck the | turbulence in a plane isn't much different. This obviously | changes at higher magnitudes but really changed my perspective. | quartesixte wrote: | There is nothing quite like it. The whole earth _moves_. It's | like being on a boat but it's solid ground. | joelbondurant0 wrote: | mensetmanusman wrote: | They should add an extra alert for people near the coast based on | your gps altitude: | | "If this were a magnitude 8.5, you would have had 15 minutes | before the tsunami reached your altitude." | not2b wrote: | There are already good tsunami warning systems in place in many | vulnerable areas. | klenwell wrote: | I received my first and, as yet, only earthquake warning on my | smart phone this past September for a 4.3 earthquake here in | Southern California. | | It was an interesting fleeting experience. I was sitting on the | couch, phone in hand, when it emitted an unusual fairly obnoxious | noise. I glanced at the screen, saw the words earthquake and 4 | something, and understood what was being conveyed sort of | inchoately without making it explicit sense of it. My wife was | sitting next to me reading so I turned to her and tried to show | it to her but she remained absorbed in her reading. | | Then the room jolted, rocked a little, and settled. The nice | thing about the alert is I remained relaxed the whole time. | Because the alert indicated the magnitude, I wasn't too worried | about damage or personal injury. | | Now if it had warned of a larger earthquake, like a 5 or 6, I | imagine I would have been more panicked. Still, the warning would | have been even more valuable in that case. | | It was one of the more acute "Now this feels like living in the | future" moments I've had recently. | codegeek wrote: | In case this helps, I recommend registering with nixle [0] for | any emergency notifications to your phone. It provides more | accurate and real time details from local agencies in your | area. | | https://www.nixle.com/ | dfxm12 wrote: | I've got no idea at what magnitude I should start worrying. I | would assume, and hope, that if my phone (which is otherwise on | silent) is blaring, it _must_ be a big deal. Maybe for some | people a 4.3 is a big deal, but not for all... | kevinmchugh wrote: | Distance from the epicenter matters as well. I was 6 miles | from a 4.9 last month, my first real earthquake. It was | unsettling and concerning (including for the people I was on | zoom with) but that was it. Nothing fell off the walls, iirc | no fatalities or buildings demolished. | | The scale is logarithmic. My rule of thumb is that 5 is where | things start to get much more dangerous. | Enginerrrd wrote: | Where I'm from, (Just a few miles from where this one was) | we don't really start to worry until 7+. | klenwell wrote: | We had had an earthquake in low 5's here a couple years | earlier. That was nerve-wracking but didn't do any damage. So | I think I was gauging my reaction (mostly instinctively) off | that. | | Actually, I just looked up the previous earthquake: | | https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ci38457511. | .. | | That one was a 7.1! Significantly larger than I remembered | but more distant. I must have been thinking of an earlier | earthquake. | 323 wrote: | Below 5 you only need to worry about objects in your | immediate vicinity. | | Old/poorly built buildings start collapsing at about 6. | | Above 8, almost any building can collapse. | lostlogin wrote: | Christchurch, New Zealand was smashed by a 6.2. Pretty much | as you say, older and poorly designed building didn't fare | well, and the earlier 7.2 earthquake wouldn't have helped. | It was a very shallow earthquake too. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Christchurch_earthquak | e | quartesixte wrote: | Earthquake codes in California mitigate a lot of the | intensity of a shake and its damage. | | Anecdotally, I heard to level Downtown Los Angeles | completely it will have to be hit with some absurd | Earthquake like a 9.0 | clairity wrote: | a number of years ago, i worked in one of the downtown LA | office towers when a 5.x earthquake hit. it was a jolt | and rumble, and looking out the window, we saw the other | towers nearby swaying back and forth. then we realized | _we_ were also swaying back and forth. it was unnerving | to say the least. the little engineer in me eventually | kicked in to point out that that engineered-in | flexibility was what kept us from breaking apart and | crashing into the ground. | njarboe wrote: | The strike slip fault system in most of California can | produce earthquakes up to about 8.0. Subduction zone | earthquakes that occur in many places, like Northern | California up to Alaska, Chile, Japan, etc, can produce | 9+ earthquakes. 10 and above only occur during large | impact events. So California can have buildings | "earthquake proofed" for much lower cost than say Seattle | and they come at higher frequency. That may be one of the | reasons that California's infrastructure is pretty well | prepared for coming earthquakes while Seattle will have | major damage when the next 9.0 hits in 0-400 years. | jandrewrogers wrote: | The most dangerous fault line in Seattle, both in terms | of earthquake and tsunami risk, is the eponymous system | of shallow thrust faults[0] that run through the middle | of the city and historically have produced ~7.0 | earthquakes. | | Seattle buildings built in the last 3 decades are | explicitly designed to survive extreme earthquakes. Most | of the risk is in the 1970s and earlier infrastructure, | quite a lot of which has been torn down to make room for | the massive growth of Seattle. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Fault | cutemonster wrote: | > designed to survive extreme earthquakes | | What magnitude is that? (The highest they're designed to | survive) | hsod wrote: | dredmorbius wrote: | This depends greatly on building codes, structure contents, | and local geology. | | In California and Japan, decades of stringent building | codes mean that _most_ structures are likely to be safe | agaist even large quakes, in the sense that occupants | should survive, even if the structure itself is not | repairable. | | Along the central and eastern US, and in large parts of | rural China, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, amongst other areas, | building codes, geology, and general preparadness and | awareness (or lack) can make even comparatively small | quakes deadly. | | From the Rockies east, the US is underlayed by largely- | intact limestone and a thick crust which can propagate | seere ground movement hundreds of kilometers, up to 1,000 | km or more. By comparison, along th USwest coast, being 100 | --200 km from an epicentre usually renders even a large | quake largely harmless (though it may still be felt). | Additionally, construction standards in the central/eastern | US and other regions mentioned above tend to result in far | more severe structural damage. Rescue, aid, and shelter | capabilities may also be limited. | | (In California, the principle geological hazard is fill or | other soils prone to liquefaction, which can greatly | amplify movement locally. Landslides may also be a concern. | In mountains, rockslides.) | | The guidelines 323 gives are useful for California and | Japan. Elsewhere, comparable damage might occur a magnitude | below those given. | ecpottinger wrote: | Here in Ontario we had a small quake caused by a rock | slide in Lake Ontario, almost no damage was seen. But my | friend in Bowmanville said her grand mother lost tens of | thousands of dollars in custom plates that she has | displayed on ledges all around her house. | | Why? Because we never get earthquakes here, so there were | no lifted edges or holders! Then suddenly we get a small | quake, and they all came crashing down. | dharmab wrote: | If you live in an earthquake zone you quickly learn what a 2, | 4, 6 feel like. It is a gossip topic in your community like | the weather. | cgriswald wrote: | This isn't my experience at all and I've lived in the Bay | Area nearly half my life. I have a vague idea of what a mag | 4 earthquake feels like, and that's about it. | antod wrote: | Yeah that makes sense, people talk about what magnitude x | "feels" like, but they're really describing an | earthquakes intensity rather than magnitude. You don't | directly "feel" the magnitude. | | Any given magnitude quake is going to feel very different | for people in different situations - eg how far away, how | deep, soil conditions, how tall the building they are in | etc... | | Magnitude is related to how much energy is released - | useful for seismologists and records, while intensity is | related to ground acceleration and subjective effects | which is useful for structural engineers and the public | caught in one. | | eg that 6.2 magnitude Christchurch quake mentioned | elsewhere still managed to produce some of the highest | ever recorded vertical ground accelerations despite | releasing a tiny fraction of what a really big quake can | do. | [deleted] | Ancapistani wrote: | If you live in an area with frequent earthquakes, yes. | | I live near the New Madrid. There aren't frequent | earthquakes here at all, but historically when we do have | one... it's a big one. | zinekeller wrote: | I think that although (estimated) magnitude is helpful, | Japan's system also calculates the (estimated) intensity | from the earthquake for your local area. Not always correct | (but this tends to be rare), but usually within +/-1 of the | Shindo scale (which is their local intensity scaling). | Seems that ShakeAlert doesn't compute (yet, hopefully) the | estimated intensity in your area. | BurningFrog wrote: | You start worrying at 5.0. | rectang wrote: | It depends how close you are to the epicenter, of course. | Your figure seems about right to me: I think a 5.0 near an | epicenter would be pretty violent. But I've never been near | an epicenter -- only on the outskirts. | ryantgtg wrote: | Every time I feel an earthquake in LA, my first question | is, "was that a small one near me or a big one far away?" | antod wrote: | You get a feel for that with the shaking frequency and/or | gap between different sets of waves (P & S waves). No | discernable gap and higher jerkier frequency usually | means closer, a longer rolling feeling with separated | phases that might last longer usually means further away. | | Just like sound or ocean waves the higher frequencies | attenuate out quicker over distance. | djrogers wrote: | It also depends on what type of ground you're on. I've | been in 5+ earthquakes in a house built on solid rock | (Los Angeles area hills), and a 4.5 down in the valley. | Being on loose ground makes it feel _much_ worse. | leeoniya wrote: | > I've got no idea at what magnitude I should start worrying | | ask your building inspector | 14 wrote: | This made me think one should almost practice like a fire alarm | drill we do in grade schools. Set a random timer and when you | get the alert react. Have it go off randomly some days so you | can practice getting under a desk or in a doorway as fast as | possible. | FredFS456 wrote: | Having attended grade school in BC, Canada, we used to do | exactly that. Someone would come on the PA system to rattle | some rocks in a jar and all students would duck under the | desks until the 'earthquake' subsided, then count to 60 and | quietly file out to the field. | aleksiy123 wrote: | Was it actually rocks in a jar? I always thought it was | some kind of recording. | | Completely forget about this. Thanks for the random | nostalgia hit. | lostlogin wrote: | This is done at school in New Zealand. | magnusmundus wrote: | In the years after the disaster of 1999 [1], we used to do | exactly that in Turkey in the 2000s, couple times a year. I'm | not sure when/why they stopped. | | On a not-too-closely-related note, the last time I heard of | one was in 2013, when a group of riot police forcibly | dispersed a civilian drill. This was a few months after the | Gezi Park protests. | | 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_%C4%B0zmit_earthquake | bschwindHN wrote: | I was once in my old Tokyo apartment on the 12th floor. I use | an early earthquake warning app. It buzzed, telling me a 9.0 | occurred in Tokyo bay and I have approximately 3 seconds before | the very extreme shaking starts. I just sat down and thought | "welp I'm dead". | | It turned out to be a false alarm, triggered by something like | a monitoring station being struck by lightning. I still have | the screenshot of what the app looked like when it told me. | | Edit: found the screenshot: | | https://ibb.co/Lk4w5B4 | mensetmanusman wrote: | Yikes, that reminds me of the false 'we are all going to be | bombed soon, this is not a test' warning the people in Hawaii | got... there should be penalties for false alarms like this. | Enginerrrd wrote: | I still find the official story behind the Hawaii thing to | be kind of suspect. | BitwiseFool wrote: | I have extended family members who are employees of | Hawaii's State Government. The stories they tell... Let | me just say that the sheer incompetence and horrible | systems design people claim are responsible for that day | are entirely reasonable. | | The heart of the problem is that government jobs are | extremely lucrative for the people of Hawaii because they | pay well and because it is extraordinarily difficult to | get fired from one. While direct nepotism isn't common, | everyone is basically part of this giant extended family. | Knowing the right person can land you one of these jobs- | for-life even if you're _barely_ qualified for it. There | is also a culture of not rocking the boat. Trying to get | freeloaders fired subjects you to ostracism. So what ends | up happening is a few people end up doing the majority of | the work. While this isn 't unique to Hawaii, those | people who are actually productive end up following their | own version of 'the process' and the result is that | people are rarely sure if what they are told to do is | _really_ what they should be doing. | | I would like to submit this as supporting evidence: "A | password for the Hawaii emergency agency was hiding in a | public photo, written on a post-it note" | | https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/a-password-for-the- | hawai... | gibolt wrote: | Incompetent Contractors made a terrible UI and a trainee | didn't understand it. Pretty clear cut failure | olivermarks wrote: | Then congress person Gabbard was very clear there needed | to be repercussions following the Hawaii nuclear strike | alert fail. | ecpottinger wrote: | I seen too many times when something is made by someone | who understands what the system does but never thinks | what a rank beginner who is suddenly facing the same | display going to think. | | It is hard to remember what it is like for someone new to | a system. | gibolt wrote: | It isn't hard, it just requires active thought. | | Even better, get an uninitiated person and watch them try | it. | dredmorbius wrote: | In many cases there is some opportunity to validate | information before it goes out. In others ... not so much. | | Even a missile-launch alarm would typically have _some_ | opportunity to be assessed based on alert values (e.g., | increasing or decreasing hostilities), and perhaps multiple | sensor systems (boost-phase IR tracks plus radar | signatures, known planned non-military launches, etc.). | | In the case of earthquakes, their very unpredictability, | the brief period of time avialable in which to _make_ an | alert (often only a few seconds, in cases a few minutes) | means that manual cross-validation is all but impossible. | Still, checks across multiple seismic detectors, preferably | isolated from one another to the maximum extent possible, | would be one potential check, though you 'd still need to | have multiple sensors relatively close together, as the | time of propagation of seismic waves is both what provides | the early alert _and_ causes the damage. (Relative speeds | of P (primary) and S (secondary) waves helps --- the p | waves tend to cause less damage, but provide an earlier | alert, the s waves arrive more slowly but do most of the | damage. | | At the surface, speed differential is about 3 km/s, meaning | there's roughly 1 second of arrival differential for each | 3km the observer is from the epicentre. (Subsurface waves | travel faster.) Each 3km of separation of seismic stations | costs 1 second of advanced warning time, plus whatever | system logic and response times exist. | | But given that major earthquakes can occur suddenly and | without warning or pre-shocks, you really do pretty much | have to be ready for anything at any time. And alerting | systems need to take this into account. One option might be | to have the logic on the phone itself --- it would trigger | an alert, but only if some number of independent alarms | were detected. One would be unlikely to trigger a false | alarm, but two or three near-simultaneous alerts would | indicate a major quake. | | Penalising false alarms is probably the wrong approach. An | engineering philosophy, of determining paths to either | false positives or false negatives (each of which have high | impact), and eliminating those. | jcrawfordor wrote: | Often these false alarm incidents occur due to issues | with the "last mile" of the system in the US, which might | be substantially alleviated if there was a federal effort | to get automation in place. In a nuclear strike, for | example, NORAD would issue the alarm ("attack warning") | via FEMA NAWAS and EAS after several documented and | proceduralised validation steps. | | The problem is that after FEMA NAWAS delivers the alert | (audibly) to state and local EOCs, the next step is a | ???. In those areas that do have some type of state or | locally operated warning system, it's usually just some | staff member pushing a button... and the button pushing | is where mistakes can and do get made. In theory IPAWS | and CAP will introduce automation at this step, but | there's a lot of issues that have made CAP implementation | slow, mainly the budgetary limitations of local | governments and the fact that the major IPAWS/CAP | software vendors expect very high prices. | | Obviously in the case of earthquake warnings the options | for manual validation are very limited due to the time | constraints... but in general false-positive incidents | have come from fat fingering, not misidentification by | technical systems. There are good opportunities to put | safeguards in place for automated systems to reduce false | positives. For example (although I believe this is partly | manual), as I understand it the Pacific Tsunami Warning | Center will not issue a full warning until multiple data | buoys have indicated a tsunami wave. That doesn't | guarantee that it will be of damaging proportions once it | reaches our coasts due to the vagaries of ocean modeling | (i.e. in the case of the major Japanese earthquake in | which a tsunami did occur but was quite small by the time | it reached Hawaii, so the warnings felt a bit silly), but | it does ensure that it's not an outright false positive. | teitoklien wrote: | > there should be penalties for false alarms like this | | I'd rather have a false alarm about a dangerous event. Then | a missed alarm for the event. | | Especially if the false alarms are very rare. | olivermarks wrote: | @tulsigabbard has a lot to say about this. | https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hawaiis-panic-missile- | alert-... | bagels wrote: | The problem is that if the frequency of false alarm is | high enough, people ignore the real ones. There is also a | problem where the alarm causes harm or causes people to | unintentionally become harmed. | Vedor wrote: | In Poland, it was common to use alarm sirens on the | occasion of national holidays, even the less important | ones. I was so used to meaningless alarm signals that | hearing one was making me wonder what anniversary it was, | instead of thinking about the potential dangers. | | I'm not sure if it was a nationwide problem - voivodes | (provincial govenors) could arbitrarily decide on the use | of such a signal to commemorate important events. Maybe | it changed since then. | letitbeirie wrote: | Apparently there was actually a point in time like they | talk about in driving school, when a honking car horn | meant "watch out," not "fuck you." | s5300 wrote: | I have a friend who was stationed in Hawaii during that | alarm. He is fairly high up in naval ranking. | | We met through an extreme sport hobby in which there are | personal speed records to set, and setting those past a | certain point are quite dangerous to ones body/life. He and | I were both past said point back then. | | He was living alone at the time and was woken up by the | alert. Through his mind went "either this is a false alarm, | or I am completely fucking dead and there's nothing I can | do about it" | | Did absolutely nothing except put on his gear & went out | and set a new speed record far into the "one fuckup and | you're severely injured or dead category" | | Fun times. | lisnake wrote: | well, I have to ask what is that sport | L_226 wrote: | could be downhill skateboarding - | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSBcrmx4aFw | bonestamp2 wrote: | I don't know, but my guess would be "free soloing". | Basically, climbing up a rock face with no safety | equipment. Enthusiasts keep track of speed records for | popular climbs. Records are often proven with personal | gopro footage, eye witness, etc. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_climbing#Free_soloing | dillondoyle wrote: | I wonder what 'personal' means in his context though. A | lot of the big speed runs, el cap, that face in squamish, | are pretty established and not a super personal | experience, like say picking your favorite one pitch and | doing it. | | But I am shocked at how many climbers I know who free | solo more than 40 feet off the deck... | davidchen wrote: | If I had to warrant a guess I'm gonna say it's wingsuit | flying. I can imagine his friend living at the top of a | mountain putting on his squirrel suit to get one last | glimpse of Hawaii before shit hits the fan. | Hallucinaut wrote: | You don't go for speed when flying a wingsuit and there's | comparatively little you can do to change your speed, so | this isn't likely the answer. | buryat wrote: | I got goosebumps reading your post and seeing the screenshot. | I used to live in a seismic active region and experienced a | few 6.0 and understand that a 9.0 is an end of the world | event. | thangalin wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale | | "9.0 and greater. At or near total destruction - severe | damage or collapse to all buildings. Heavy damage and | shaking extends to distant locations. Permanent changes in | ground topography. One per 10 to 50 years." | rmason wrote: | Most you weren't alive then but Alaska had a 9.2 earthquake | in 1964. I well remember the news accounts. Luckily not | that many people lived in Alaska at the time. I cannot | imagine if a quake of that magnitude hit modern day San | Francisco. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Alaska_earthquake#:~:tex | t.... | AmVess wrote: | I got my first tornado alert in last week's outburst of | tornadoes in the midwest.I wasn't worried about it until the | tornado sirens started going off. I became quite concerned when | I saw the clouds. I'd never seen them so low and moving so | fast. 24 confirmed tornadoes! | | Luckily, they were no where near as powerful as the ones that | KY got earlier this month, but it was still alarming. | | And then the geniuses decided to do a test of the system | yesterday at 11PM. | db65edfc7996 wrote: | Even if you had been given 60 seconds warning, what kind of | mitigation can you do for a magnitude 2,4,6? Is there anything | to be done if you are walking on the street/in a car/in a N | floor building? | | I do not live in an earthquake prone region, so trying to | understand the rationale. With tornadoes, theoretically you | could move to a structurally sound room, but I am unsure if | there is any such thing to be done for an earthquake. | 317070 wrote: | You are doctor and you are just about to put an injection | when you get the message. | cutemonster wrote: | Or in a car: Stop the car. | | And indoors: | | - Drop down; take cover under a desk or table. | | - Stay away from bookcases or furniture that can fall on | you. | | - Stay away from windows. Glass may shatter from the | shakings | russdill wrote: | Occasionally I need to work in the attic, on a ladder, etc. | It'd be really good to know that everything around me is | about to move. | rich_sasha wrote: | I understand you can hide under a table (won't help if the | building collapses but you won't be whacked in the face by a | bottle or bookshelf flying through the room), stand in the | doorframe (these offer some protection AFAIU if the building | gets damaged, or even run out into the open space. | bsder wrote: | > what kind of mitigation can you do for a magnitude 2,4,6? | | Simply walk outside? If you have an empty area nearby that's | an extremely safe spot to be in an earthquake. | | If you're in a car, get out from an underpass? A lot of | deaths were due to a freeway overpass pancaking in SF. | | Open your garage door? This is one of the big things that is | supposed to happen in California. Fire departments are | supposed to have an automated system that pops the garage | doors when there is an earthquake so the trucks don't get | trapped by bent doors. | boznz wrote: | I would think with a million cellphones with sensitive | accelorometers you could get the data much quicker and much more | accurate (a million+ data points gives you a lot of options) | caleb-allen wrote: | That's exactly what this app from UC Berkeley does | | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=edu.berkeley.b... | axiosgunnar wrote: | Sounds like a privacy nightmare | bsmith0 wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy might help | varajelle wrote: | What was the exact message sent? | mwattsun wrote: | I lived through the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake near the | epicenter in Aptos California. My house suffered extensive | damage. I think 3 people total were killed in Santa Cruz. One was | standing next to a brick building and the other was next to a | horse that bolted. A 10 second warning probably would have saved | their lives, if they were prepared to take action when they got | it. On the other hand, I don't think a 10 second warning would | have done me any good. It's a great technology though. | not2b wrote: | The largest number of deaths (42) came from the collapse of a | double decker freeway structure in Oakland. It would have been | much worse if it weren't for the baseball championship game | that got many people watching the game instead of driving home. | | I was in grad school at UC Berkeley and living in San Francisco | at the time. Fortunately I left early that day, since BART was | stopped and the Bay Bridge was impassible after the earthquake. | peter303 wrote: | No smartphones then, though there was a rudimentary internet. I | had to ftp earthquake from the USGS because the web had not | been invented yet. | clsec wrote: | yeah, I don't think a 10 second warning would have done | anything other than get me outside. | | As it was, I dropped the bag of garbage I was just about to | take out, saw the corner of the living room in my second story | wood frame apartment in Mountain View move 2 feet in each | direction, and tried to get outside. That was unsuccessful | because everything in my hallway closet flew out and blocked | the front door. So I headed to my bedroom and dove into the | closet filled with dirty clothes. I remained there safely until | it was over. Which was probably safer than going outside with | exploding transformers and sketchy power lines. | | Someone else commented on wanting to feel a smaller quake. As | someone born and raised in CA I used to love feeling | earthquakes. I thought they were fun! That was until Loma | Prieta, where I honestly thought I was going to die. | ec109685 wrote: | Or more people would have ran out of the house and gotten hit | by falling debris as they fled their house. It's hard to act | rationally in that situation. | | I went through all the duck and cover drills through school, | and when the house started shaking, I bolted out of there | during that earthquake. | xattt wrote: | It's an interesting test of people's situational awareness: | what am I near right now that has the potential to kill me in | an earthquake? | mattlondon wrote: | From TFA: "up to 10 seconds warning" | | Probably a usable amount of time I guess - I expect it probably | takes 2 or 3 seconds to fully comprehend, then that leaves 5 | seconds or so to take cover. | | From someone living in UK where earthquakes are rare and tiny, | what sort of cover can you take in less than 10 seconds? Go jump | in a steel bath tub or something? Stand in a doorway? (Is that a | thing? Does it depend on wood Vs brick Vs concrete?) | Stevvo wrote: | One advantage is to make it clear to you what is going on. Many | people don't initially understand what they are experiencing as | earthquake the first time it happens. Everything shaking is so | far removed from any other experience that you might think | 'wow, that's some really strong wind' because that is the | closest reference your brain has for the situation. | jconnop wrote: | The advice we get in New Zealand is to get underneath something | strong like a table. Sitting where I am now I could probably | make it under a table in under 5 seconds. | | The bigger effect maybe is that prepares you mentally for the | impact, so you're already planning your next steps and aren't | in quite as much surpise/panic as if you had no warning. | | When things are collapsing, seconds can be the difference | between life and death. Even if a system like this only saves a | few extra percent of lives lost in a major earthquake, it | sounds worth it to me. | yosito wrote: | > The advice we get in New Zealand is to get underneath | something strong like a table | | Depending on how earthquake-proof a building is, this could | be bad advice. If you're in an earthquake-proof building, a | table will protect you from falling objects. If the building | you're in collapses, you'll want to be _next to_ something | that 's not very compressible, like a bed or a couch. The | collapse will leave open triangles next to objects like this, | which are the best place to survive a collapse. | tempnow987 wrote: | Your elevator stops at next floor and doors open. | | You grab your child practicing their walking skills on a | dangerous edge. | | I just get up and stand in a doorway away from the unsecured | bookshelves. | indigomm wrote: | We get more than people think in the UK [0], but nothing to | worry about - a mouse fart compared to Japan, West Coast, etc. | | [0] https://earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/education/faqs/faq6.html | bsder wrote: | Bad earthquakes aren't short. They can go on for several | minutes. | | I'm not going to interrupt may day for a 4.0. For a 6.0+, I | will probably turn off anything on the gas stove and walk | outside if I can. | SeanA208 wrote: | I'm surprised this xkcd hasn't been shared here yet. Highly | relevant: https://xkcd.com/723/ | digitallyfree wrote: | While mobile alerts are great, I wish there was a way to | (voluntarily) get those official warnings via other means like | (landline) phone call, SMS, or email - in cases where you may not | have your phone on you or if there is no service. | seidoger wrote: | I don't know if that's everywhere in Japan but in 2014 I was in | Tokyo having lunch outside when suddenly this fast alert (ie. | not a slow siren) started blaring, 5 seconds later the ground | was shaking. | dragonwriter wrote: | > I wish there was a way to (voluntarily) get those official | warnings via other means | | Mobile alerts are the most recent addition in the US; they are | also carried by radio and TV broadcast, Cable TV, and a variety | of other mechanisms. But not POTS,SMS, or email. | therealdrag0 wrote: | Have you checked your local government services? Some have | emergency alerts via sms. Not sure if earthquake maybe be | included. | akyoan wrote: | I'm not sure if SMS and email are ever considered urgent enough | for this purpose. The alert is sent out _seconds_ before, it 's | either a loud and unusual sound or you might get to read/answer | _after_ it actually hits. | | i.e. it'd be useless. | Lammy wrote: | > "We got some reports from folks that they got up to 10 seconds' | warning before they felt shaking. That's pretty darn good," said | Robert de Groot, a ShakeAlert coordinator with the USGS. | | Fun fact: that's three times longer than it takes to safely trip | a nuclear reactor: "A reactor trip causes all the control rods to | insert into the reactor core, and shut down the plant in a very | short time (about three seconds)." https://public-blog.nrc- | gateway.gov/2012/12/28/what-is-a-rea... | | I mention this because this quake's epicenter is pretty close to | the Humboldt Bay NGS, and there's always a lot of uninformed | hand-wringing about atomic energy near fault lines (even though | this particular station has been offline since 1988) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldt_Bay_Nuclear_Power_Pla... | mpyne wrote: | I'm a nuke proponent but it's very worth pointing out that a | nuclear reactor that has been recently shutdown will need days | of cooling to be available in order to safely avoid damage to | the reactor and potential meltdown, pressure spikes, etc. | | New-ish designs can do the cooling completely passively but not | all active nuclear reactors are so equipped (Fukushima's | Daiichi's ancient BWR design needed active cooling, which | failed in the tsunami, while the slightly newer BWR design at | Fukushima Daini survived the tsunami damage without further | core damage). | outworlder wrote: | It's also worth noting that, in the case of the Fukushima | accident, all nuclear reactors shutdown correctly when the | earthquake was detected, before it reached the plants. All of | them, including the affected plant, shutdown as designed. Then | the tsunami came and created a bunch of issues (lots of vital | equipment at ground level, generator trucks came and were | incompatible, yada yada yada). | | Japan has a great early warning system for both earthquakes and | tsunamis that has been in operation for quite a while now(since | 2007?) | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAxxZkpV0HI&t=62s | ralph84 wrote: | In California is there a way to configure an iPhone so you get | earthquake alerts but not covid alerts? | djrogers wrote: | I'm not sure where you're getting your COVID alerts from - I | live in California and have never seen one. Maybe you installed | an app? | tedunangst wrote: | https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/11/16/san-jose-officials- | ar... | ralph84 wrote: | Santa Clara county. Every time there was a new health order | or vaccine availability change they sent an alert. Not from | an app. On iPhone the options are amber alerts, emergency | alerts, and public safety alerts. The question is what combo | of those if any will give you real emergencies and skip the | custody disputes and covid noise. | Miiko wrote: | San Mateo county. Have all alerts enabled in my iPhone and | never got any covid-related or custody dispute alerts. You | probably either have some app installed or enrolled in some | service. | ralph84 wrote: | Your county health officer and my county health officer | have had quite different takes on covid. | Rebelgecko wrote: | iOS probably lets you uninstall the California contact tracing | app, that should stop the alerts | mongol wrote: | Does it sound different than other sounds a phone usually makes? | I imagine that unless it is carefully designed, the reaction | could be "what is that"? | Havoc wrote: | Another poster above describes the sound as obnoxious so | presumably not the normal ones | anticensor wrote: | No, usual notification sound, cannot be DNDd but can be | silenced by setting the default notification tone as silent. | AnssiH wrote: | According to a graphic in the OP article there are different | types of mobile alerts depending on the earthquake strength, | only the strongest ones triggering an actual Wireless | Emergency Alert. | teeray wrote: | On iOS, these alerts mimic SAME tones[0]. It sounds like a | brighter version of the combined attention tone with a bit of | modulation. | | [0] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_Area_Message_Encoding | JetAlone wrote: | Pretty good design predilection nonetheless. The one in Japan | is very distinctive. | tkgally wrote: | I don't know what it sounds like in California, but in Japan, | where I live, it's unmistakable: a very loud buzz followed by a | female voice saying firmly--in Japanese, at least on my phone-- | "It's an earthquake," repeated over and over. | | I've experienced it maybe a dozen times over the past ten | years. (I've felt earthquakes much more frequently here than I | did in California, where I grew up.) | | Two or three times it has woken me up in the middle of the | night, and I was able to get up and move away from the dresser | that's right next to my futon and could conceivably tip over on | me. (I shouldn't be sleeping there, I know.) | | Several times I was near other people--on a commuter train, in | a meeting, walking along a sidewalk--when multiple phones | sounded the alarm at the same time. Once or twice, I've been on | a train that stopped suddenly with an automated announcement | coming over the loudspeaker saying "Emergency stop! | Earthquake." Once I felt fairly strong shaking after the train | had stopped, so the advance warning might have prevented a | derailment. | | Maybe half the time no perceptible shaking has followed the | alert, either because I was too far away from the affected area | or because it was a false alarm. One such false alarm occurred | on July 29, 2020, and the Meteorological Agency issued an | apology [1, in Japanese]. There have also been at least a | couple of strong earthquakes where the system didn't go off | when it was supposed to, so it's not yet perfect. | | The alerts are startling but also reassuring. It's much better | to have a twenty-second warning than none at all. | | [1] https://digital.asahi.com/articles/ASN7Z4631N7ZUTIL01Z.html | gwbas1c wrote: | > One such false alarm occurred on July 29, 2020, and the | Meteorological Agency issued an apology | | That's so important for emergency alert systems: | Acknowledgement that false alarms are disruptive and | apologizing for the stress that they cause. | | After being woken up in the middle of the night for an | unjustified alarm I proactively turn off all emergency alarms | on my phone. If, in the morning, all the headlines were about | an apology, I'd keep the alarm on. | iszomer wrote: | Here's a good visual representation of their early warning | system back in 2011.. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-FMpNBfna8 | UsernameChoice wrote: | Interesting. As someone who watches the live seismic data in | Japan from the US, I would have thought it'd be the nice | sounding chime that they play on TV stations. Then again, | it's a phone, so buzzing is definitely a go-to solution for | notifying the people in the vicinity. | goodcanadian wrote: | _There have also been at least a couple of strong earthquakes | where the system didn't go off when it was supposed to, so | it's not yet perfect._ | | Obviously, I don't know the exact details of those incidents, | but if the epicentre is too close to you, there will not be | time for the alert to occur. The alerts work because the | earthquake travels slower than the telecommunications | signals. No alert can be triggered until after an earthquake | has occurred. Then, however, a warning can be sent to notify | people further away from the epicentre before the shaking | reaches them. | not2b wrote: | Yes, the further you are from the epicenter the more time | there is for a warning, but it doesn't rely on having a | detector right at the center. That's because there are two | sets of seismic waves that travel at different speeds. P | waves arrive first; S (shear) waves cause most of the | damage. Of course, electronic signals travel much faster | than either. | EE84M3i wrote: | In the large earthquake in Tokyo in October, I felt the P | wave, then got the alert on one of my phones, then the | s-wave hit and I got the alert on my other phone | (different provider). Interesting seeing the race, and I | wonder how optimized notification systems are. | | [1]: | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Chiba_earthquake | mensetmanusman wrote: | Sounds like you could give people ptsd if you made that your | ring tone. | sirn wrote: | This[1] is how it sounds in Japan if anyone is interested. | | The author of the sound (Kokubo Takashi) interviewed in the | past[2] that he designed the sound to make people alerted, | but it must not make people feel uneasy or causing panic. The | sound must also not resemble any other alert sound as people | may ignore it. The result is what we're using in Japan today, | repeating three times to ensure it draws enough attention. | | [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DGAuxO_YWE | | [2]: https://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/6419314/ | quartesixte wrote: | Someone needs to tell the North American market to not make | everything the same tone. The alerts in California are | almost completely ignored now because they use it | constantly for Amber Alerts/Silver Alerts. | jcrawfordor wrote: | I have long complained that "amber alerts," "silver | alerts," and in some states "blue alerts" have seriously | degraded the value and functionality of these alerts | through desensitization. The original design goal that | lead, through many evolutions, to EAS/WEA/IPAWS/etc, was | an alert system that would cause the public to take | organized, pre-planned steps within _30 seconds_ of the | issuance of the alert [1]. While we no longer worry about | nuclear attack on such a short timeline, earthquake early | warning has once again highlighted the requirement for a | system that is _immediately recognizable as requiring | protective action._ Overloading EAS with these types of | messages, while politically appealing, has effectively | eliminated the ability of the system to demand an | immediate response. This will, ultimately, endanger | lives. | | Ultimately, nothing should be issued via EAS that does | not require _prompt and decisive action._ This is not an | exotic category: tornadoes, flash flooding, large hail, | tsunamis, earthquakes, and civil and industrial | emergencies are all reasonably frequent real-world events | in which prompt and decisive action by the public saves | lives and property. Unfortunately we have completely | tangled them in with "a child was abducted, or a senior | citizen wandered, or a cop was shot somewhere in the | state," a scenario with no generally understood action | for the public. That information should be disseminated | using means other than the distinctive EAS attention tone | which has always been intended to be reserved for those | situation in which you must act immediately [2]. | | This doesn't mean a return to the old situation in which | only POTUS was authorized to issue emergency messages, | but it should mean that emergency message issuance is | limited to scenarios that meet the same general criteria | of requiring immediate action, regardless of their | originator. The NWS and state governors (really their | EOCs) do produce such alerts, but they should receive | specific criteria to require. | | [1] It had been determined in the 1950s that action | within 30 seconds would produce substantial (e.g. 70%) | reduction in fatalities in the case of an unanticipated | nuclear attack, but that warning greater than 30 seconds | was not always feasible. Improved early detection systems | such as OTH radar have made this issue somewhat obsolete, | although more recent developments such as HGVs and | nuclear-armed "sea drones" like Kanyon have potentially | brought it back to relevance even just in the case of | nuclear war. | | [2] Really the attention tone is a leftover technical | detail from an earlier implementation, but its use has | been specifically protected because it is so well | recognized by the public as an indication of a national | emergency. Unfortunately that protection is at the whims | of legislators which frequently expand it to include | whatever is politically appealing, regardless of actual | outcomes. | MisterTea wrote: | > ... I was able to get up and move away from the dresser | that's right next to my futon and could conceivably tip over | on me. (I shouldn't be sleeping there, I know.) | | There are restraints you can buy that attach furniture to the | walls with a strap. I know its sold to prevent children from | attempting to turn their dresser drawers into a set of steps | which when climbed tips over on top of them. | dmurray wrote: | Even my cheap IKEA bookcase came with a strap and a mount | point for it. I think it would withstand a moderate | earthquake, but not necessarily a child applying that level | of leverage. | lostlogin wrote: | It's worth doing. A baby was killed by a toppling tv here | in New Zealand during the Christchurch earthquake. | | https://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay- | today/news/christchurc... | zikduruqe wrote: | https://www.charlieshouse.org | | And it saves lives too. | tjpnz wrote: | A couple of months ago I was walking through a park late at | night thinking I was alone. So it was a rather surreal | experience to see phones light up everywhere around me with | that woman's voice speaking in almost perfect unison. | | In this particular case there was a 2-3 second warning. Was | one of the more violent ones Tokyo has had recently and I was | rather glad to not have been inside. | nend wrote: | Ever receive a flash flood warning, severe weather alert | (lightning, tornado), or amber alert on your phone? It'd be the | same notification. I'm sure there's others too, those are just | the ones I've received before. | bombcar wrote: | I'm so glad apple separated amber alerts from the emergency | broadcasts. Used to get two or three a week which made it | completely useless. | xeromal wrote: | On Android, I've unsubscribed from everything except | presidential alerts. | | I had my last straw when I started getting alerts for wear | a mask and other ridiculous crap. | lostlogin wrote: | I've been a supporter of the government campaigning and | messaging here in New Zealand. However if this was | happening I'd be most unhappy. | | It's close to the Orwell '2 minute hate'. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate | xeromal wrote: | Yeah, the original idea was excellent. Great for warnings | or child abductions but now even the child abduction | stuff is annoying. Some parents battling over the custody | of their kids is now a child abduction | MerelyMortal wrote: | It would be really nice on Android if I could get the | alerts without the obnoxious noise. | | Since the noise and the alert are tied together, and I | absolutely detest the noise, I have the alert turned off. | | It's silly that you can turn off the ring for a phone | call and still get the notification, but can't turn off | the alert noise without also turning off the alert | notification. | xeromal wrote: | Yeah, it's supposed to be grating because it's a rare | even but sending daily covid advice is honestly a waste | of a good system. | dylan604 wrote: | I have mixed feelings on Amber Alerts. I'm in Texas, and I | receive alerts for things that are happening so far away | from me, that most states could fit inside the distance | apart. Seems like there should be some sort of max distance | away for the alerts to be issued. | | I've also wondered if useable information has been received | from these alerts, or if it's just a bit of psychology | being used against the perps when the alert about them goes | off on their phone. | opwieurposiu wrote: | The majority of amber alerts are from parents in custody | disputes. Mom says dad stole the kids or visa versa. They | really should not be putting these cases into the same | category as abductions. | dylan604 wrote: | There should be a fine for this. I understand that there | are situations where a parent does take their kids where | it would actually fall under abduction/kidnapping. | However, if parents are abusing the alert system for | minor custody disputes, then this should be handled with | a severe punishment. Almost to the point of losing the | custody battle if they're that immature. | dzdt wrote: | The alerts are sent by police, not parents. I was curious | and at one point went thru a year's records for NY state | amber alerts. There were zero instances of stranger | abduction. Most cases are as you say children taken by | parent without custodial rights, with a secondary set of | teens running away, sometimes with an older romantic | partner. | jeromegv wrote: | Depends on the jurisdiction. In Canada, it's all the same. | scohesc wrote: | It's absolutely crazy that whoever decided to create the | warning system in Canada decided to roll "amber alerts" | and "presidential alerts" into the same alert. So now I | can get woken up in the middle of the night for an alert | for a lost child hundreds of kilometers away that I can't | do anything about - and, even if I turn off amber alerts, | they still come in as a presidential message. | | This has happened numerous times. | reaperducer wrote: | If I lived in Canada and got a presidential alert, I'd be | pretty alarmed. If I got a prime minister alert, less so. | ALittleLight wrote: | Can't you turn off Presidential alerts? | xxpor wrote: | No. It's the one level you can't turn off. | dtech wrote: | Android's Emergency Broadcast is very loud and distinctive, my | country tests periodically. | | I'm not sure if seconds before impact would be early enough for | me to take action though. | 323 wrote: | Earthquakes tend to have a bit of a ramp up period (P wave vs | S wave), I was in an earthquake once and could figure out | initially what was going on, because I was experiencing the | first low intensity waves. An alert would avoid this initial | confusion. | themodelplumber wrote: | FWIW this recent quake triggered a pleasant bell-chime sound on | my Android phone. I hadn't heard that particular sound before. | | I appreciate that the warning gave me enough time to radio my | kids in the house and let them know to expect something. | | We never felt the quake but it was good practice anyway. | [deleted] | robertlagrant wrote: | The cause of the earthquake has been identified as all the phones | simultaneously vibrating from a stress test of the alerting | system. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-12-23 23:00 UTC)