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Why You Got Jolted Out Of Your Sleep At 3 AM By A False Earthquake Alarm
The MyShake app sent out an alert at 3:19 a.m.
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Jacob Margolis
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LAist
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Here’s the way the Great Shakeout is supposed to work: in preparation for a big earthquake, people around the world participate in drills at 10:19 a.m. local time. In some places, like California, those drills also include a test alert for people with earthquake early warning apps, like MyShake.
Here’s what happened instead: some users of MyShake were awakened at 3:19 a.m., which would be accurate if your clock was set to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is seven hours ahead of PST.
The test alert was sent at 3:19 AM Pacific Time due to a configuration glitch. We apologize to all of our users and will ensure that this will not occur in the 2024 ShakeOut Drill. The capability of MyShake to deliver realtime alerts for real earthquakes is not affected.
— MyShake (@MyShakeApp) October 19, 2023
According to the official MyShake account on X, there was a “time configuration glitch."
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My wife wasn’t happy about this accidental test at 3:20am. She said (at 3:21am) while I’m half asleep “you need to find out what happened. They are going to rub the public the wrong way” https://t.co/Ds8sTSJakM
— Forrest Lanning 👾🏔️ (@rabidmarmot) October 19, 2023
Emergency messaging mistakes like this can threaten public confidence in critical tools, like the earthquake early warning system. If people feel like they’re unreliable, there’s a risk they’ll either opt out or ignore important messages in the future.
The only upside to all this is that at least we know that when the app sends out an alert for a real quake, we’ll wake up in a panic, filled with adrenaline before the shaking hits.
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