Washington state residents have another way to be alerted to an earthquake and potential shaking with the arrival of the MyShake app, a service that was previously only available in California and Oregon.
The free app, designed by seismologists and engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, is available for iOS and Android devices and is meant to provide seconds of warning to users after an earthquake is detected and before shaking happens.
The app uses the ShakeAlert automated system run by the U.S. Geological Survey in partnership with the Universities of Washington, Oregon, California-Berkeley and Caltech. That system uses ground motion sensors in all three states to detect earthquakes that have occurred and automatically notify people to “drop, cover and hold on.”
ShakeAlert warnings have been live in Washington state since last May, but only for Android users and those who receive Wireless Emergency Alert system warnings (the same system that produces AMBER alerts).
MyShake brings a third option to alert people, and it’s said to deliver its warnings faster than WEA, which wasn’t built for speed. According to the UW’s Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, MyShake is proven to deliver alerts within five seconds or less of the USGS reporting an earthquake detection.
The WEA system notifies users about earthquakes of magnitude 5 and up, for people who are likely to feel a shaking intensity of MMI 4+. The MyShake app notifies users about earthquakes of magnitude 4.5 and up, for people who are likely to feel a shaking intensity of MMI 3+.
ShakeAlert does not predict earthquakes before they happen, but is designed to rapidly detect ones that have already begun. Ground motion sensors near the earthquake feel the ground shaking and relay that information to a data processing center. The precise location of the quake is determined and ShakeAlert algorithms quickly estimate the strength and areas that will likely feel shaking.
The MyShake app has been downloaded more than 1.6 million times since it was launched in late 2019. Most recently, the Earthquake Early Warning system provided warning to about half a million phones, for a magnitude 6.2 earthquake near Petrolia, Calif., on Dec. 20.
The UW’s PNSN pointed out the availability of the MyShake app in Washington comes on the 322nd anniversary of the Cascadia subduction zone earthquake of 1700.
Learn more about the three different alerting options and get instructions on how to enable them.