Officials: Automatic alert reports false Dayton earthquake
The U.S. Geological Survey is investigating the cause of a false alert sent out reporting a 5.9 earthquake that never occurred Thursday morning.
An automatic detection system triggered cell phone alerts to a large earthquake near Dayton. The alerts were reported as far away as the Bay Area and central California. The alert reported “strong shaking expected” and advising “drop, cover, hold on.” But no seismic activity ever took place, according to Christie Rowe, director of Nevada Seismological Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Yaareb Al Taweel, a USGS geophysicist, told the Appeal the USGS conducts local checks and detects earthquakes according to waveforms, which capture the vibrations that travel through or along the Earth’s surface.
“We checked the seismic stations within the region and we didn’t find anything,” Al Taweel said. “That’s how we determined the event was not accurate.”
An earthquake of a 5.9 magnitude would have been felt on the other side of the world, he added.
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Earthquake alerts are automated, and the USGS does not release any automated events, Al Taweel said.
“Because our office does not release any automated events, everything we release is reviewed by a live person,” he said. “The early warning system is an automated system. Usually if a mistake is being made, the magnitude is inaccurate or the depth is an inaccurate location.”
Al Taweel said he’s never seen any false alerts go out as it did with this instance.
“There was no earthquake,” he said.
The USGS posted the 5.9 event shortly after 8:06 a.m. and then within 30 minutes deleted the event. Nevada Appeal staff witnessed the USGS website also report three people feeling the alleged quake on its “Did you Feel It?” page. Those reports were removed when the event was deleted from the USGS page.
“The ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system was activated for a magnitude 5.9 earthquake near Reno and Carson City,” according to the U.S. Geological Survey website as of noon Thursday. “The event did not occur and has been deleted from USGS websites and data feeds. USGS and our partners are currently looking into why the warning was issued to a broad region of California.”
