PLEASANT HILL (KRON) — Earthquake early warning alerts will be available beginning Thursday for everyone in California.
The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services says the warnings will be pushed through a smartphone app called “My Shake.”
This was developed at UC Berkeley.
It cannot predict earthquakes but it detects them and will let you know if you will feel any shaking in your area.
The warnings are produced by the shakealert system.
If the earthquake is a 4.5 magnitude or higher — like what was felt earlier this week — it’ll send alerts to areas where shaking is likely going to happen.
It’s an app some people in Pleasant Hill say they want on their phone.
“Right now I don’t know when the earthquake is going to happen,” said Pleasant Hill resident Tom Natividad. “It’s just going to happen at any given time so some type of alert system would help it would benefit people.”
People are still talking about the 4.5 magnitude earthquake that shook the East Bay earlier this week.
“It was incredible,” said Pleasant Hill resident Carlos Bustos. “I would definitely download it and highly recommend it why’s that? Because it will help a lot of people and maybe save lives.”
The My Shake app has been in development for years and its statewide debut just so happens to fall on the 30th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake.
App creators say research will improve if more people use the app.
Users can also let scientists know what they felt and if they saw any damage through the app itself.
The creators of the app at UC Berkeley were not available for interviews with KRON4 Wednesday.
They did tell KRON4 there will be some sort of an announcement tomorrow morning at 11 a.m. .