Major improvements made to earthquake early-warning app

AccuWeather

According to the USGS, the app should now alert people faster than ever before when earthquakes have been detected. AccuWeather's Emmy Victor shows us how the early-warning system works.

Transcript

00:00moments before the ground starts shaking from an earthquake. People who live on

00:04the west coast may feel their phone vibrating. Anything we can do to reduce

00:10the amount of time between when we detect the earthquake in the field and

00:13when someone gets something on their phone or when a system reacts to it is

00:18really our goal. Shake alert. A new early warning system can alert people

00:22seconds before a magnitude five or greater earthquake strikes. It may not

00:27seem like a lot of time, but it can prevent injuries. I think it's really

00:31important for people to know that the amount of time they may get is probably

00:36pretty short, but even the shortest amount of times, even that awareness

00:40will allow them to take that protective action, drop, cover and hold on. All

00:43they need is a couple of seconds to do that. The USGS debuted shake alert in

00:47California, Oregon and Washington. By using data from sensors placed up and

00:53down the coast, scientists are able to detect earthquakes. What we produce is

00:58something called the shake alert message. It's a data package that

01:00contains information about what the estimated magnitude, the location and

01:05the potential shaking from an earthquake. We make that shake alert

01:09message available to one of our many partners who are out there. In order to

01:15receive the alerts, you must activate emergency notifications on your phone.

01:19You can do so in your settings. For AccuWeather, I'm Emmy Victor.

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