A few seconds can matter a lot in case of a heavy earthquake, and hundreds of people and properties can be saved if the administration or a citizen gets an alert even before a few seconds. On Tuesday Morning, an earthquake of 5.1 magnitudes shook the Bay Area, and some citizens got a warning eighteen seconds ago of the shake.
The Alert
The MyShake app on smartphones popped a notification showing “critical”, and the pop-up “drop, cover, hold on” flashed out just seconds before the earthquake began.
Ninety-five thousand smartphones got the pop-up warning via the app Tuesday morning before the quake, and since then, people are rapidly downloading the app, said the Seismology Lab director of UC Berkeley. There were over two million downloads on Tuesday after the system passed the tough test of recognizing a potential earthquake of 5.1 magnitudes. The officials needed to be more sure about the app’s utility as it was new. After it warned people about the right time before the shake, they were pleased with it.
The Earthquake
The earthquake on Tuesday had its depth of four miles from the surface in the southern part of Mount Hamilton and twelve miles east of downtown San Jose. The earliest warning from the MyShake app went to the phone located farthest from the quake’s epicentre.
The Reports
More than seven thousand people in the quake’s impact zone reported getting alerts from the app. Over four thousand people reported “light shaking”, while 1,326 people reported “moderate shaking, and almost 1,400 people reported no shaking.
The Work Process of the App
The MyShake app, introduced in 2019, tracks the motion data from the smartphone’s sensor and analyzes whether the motion fits an earthquake model.
