Los Angeles has unveiled the US’s first publicly available earthquake early-warning app, a development seismologists hope will move cities across the west coast to invest in wide-scale alert technology.

ShakeAlertLA uses mobile app technology to warn Los Angeles county residents when the US Geological Survey’s early warning sensor network indicates an earthquake of 5.0 magnitude or larger is about to shake their location.

Seconds may not seem like much warning, but with earthquakes, “getting a few seconds’ heads-up can make a big difference if you need to pull to the side of the road, get out of an elevator, or drop, cover, and hold on,” the Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, said in a statement.

The app, available for Android and Apple smartphones, only applies to Los Angeles county. Although public service agencies throughout the west coast have been utilizing the USGS’s early warning sensor network to detect earthquakes since October, the technology to immediately alert residents across the region to take cover does not exist, said Richard Allen, director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory.

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In the case of an earthquake, existing alerts such as amber alerts and the presidential alert are simply too slow, Allen continued. During its test in September, some smartphone users reported a 15-second delay in receiving the Presidential Alert.

“The purpose of early warning is to get people into that safe place before the shaking starts instead of once the shaking starts,” he said. “If you have a few seconds, you can get under a sturdy table, you can get away from that bookcase, you can move away from hazardous materials, you can move away from the places you are likely to be injured.”

But the architects behind the ShakeAlertLA pilot program believe that the app is “a crucial step towards delivering ShakeAlerts to the entire West Coast”, according to Garcetti’s office.

Regions will face varying challenges. Typically, the farther users are from the epicenter of an earthquake, the more time they will have between an alert and a quake.

San Francisco is located between the San Andreas fault line and the Hayward fault line. “Due to the proximity of our fault lines, the San Francisco Bay Area only has few seconds of warning with the current earthquake early warning technology,” said Francis Zamora, a spokesman for the city’s department of emergency management.

Efforts to set up an SMS alert system three years ago failed. The city has since turned its focus on sending automated alerts to critical facilities like fire stations and schools.

“San Francisco is monitoring the pilot program in Los Angeles and looks forward to evaluating the results of the program,” he said.



Allen said he was hopeful that ShakeAlertLA would “accelerate” the development of this alert technology.

“More cities should be asking why don’t we have an app as well,” Allen said. “We need to make sure everybody gets the alert before the next big earthquake strikes.”