Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

In parts of the world (think, Japan, other parts of Asia) where they have even more dangerous earthquakes than we do, they’ve for years had warning systems that detected earthquakes starting and send out alerts to peoples’ phones and computers. While the energy from an earthquake spreads out from the epicenter quickly, communications systems are even faster. If you’re on the epicenter or just a couple miles away, you’re screwed. But if you’re twenty miles away and it takes a minute or two for the shaking to start and the system can trigger your phone in ten seconds, then you have fifty seconds to pull your car over to the side of the road, to get away from the windows and under the desk in your office, to have surgeons pause their operations, to have elevators stop and let people off.

We’re starting to implement those systems here in the US, but in all of the five or six years that I remember them being active here in SoCal, I don’t recall them ever going off before the shaking starts for me, or if they do go off, it’s been for a false alarm, telling me about something too small and/or too far away to be felt by me.

Until tonight.

Buzzing, shaking, that’s an alert that I hadn’t seen before and it definitely got my immediate attention! But there was no shaking. I had enough time to think, “Another false alarm?”

The watch went off a few seconds later, but still no shaking. I figured it’s different alert systems all tied into the same network. False alarm? By now it’s been maybe thirty seconds and my brain is thinking through the “how big?” and “how far away?” math…

And then the shaking started. The quake was 100 miles away or so, so by the time the energy got here we were swaying back and forth like being in a boat when a barge had gone by and the wake was making us bob around. That’s actually an excellent analogy, except instead of water it’s rock that’s transmitting the waves and energy.

While things were swaying around, multiple more alerts came in. Our shaking lasted for 20-30 seconds and never got particularly violent or energetic, but it was very, VERY noticeable. Even if we hadn’t gotten an alert it wasn’t like we would have overlooked it. If it’s small enough and/or far enough away, you only know there was an earthquake when you see a news report about it. This would not have been one of those.

So, the system worked! I’m sure they got a lot of good data on how to make it better for the next time, but I sure felt better given that 30-second warning. Especially if we have some higher confidence that the system works, when it goes off next time (and there will always be a next time) I’ll pay attention immediately. It’s not like hurricane warnings that are out there a week before the storm hits, or even tornado alerts that go out a few hours early. If sixty seconds is possible, I’ll take it!