It was 10:19 a.m. when the team at the National Weather Service dropped, covered, and held on during the great shakeout.
Started in Southern California back in 2008, the shakeout has been an annual day in October to practice safety during an earthquake.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) studied 7.0 magnitude quakes and the drill grew from there.
“Rather than just make this an academic study, Lucy Jones, who was at the USGS at the time, had the idea of having it with a public activity,” Cal Poly Humboldt geology professor Lori Dengler said.
That activity then expanded to elementary schools, then into other areas.
The Shakeout partnered with different notification apps like MyShake, Humboldt Alerts, and even Cal Poly Humboldt’s own notification systems.
However, people with the my shake app got their alert – a little earlier than the rest.
“There was a little bit of a goof and some people were awakened at 3:19 a.m. which is ironic because last Monday, you may have been awakened at 3:20 a.m. by a real earthquake,” Dengler said. “The MyShake alert that came at that time today was human error. Whoever was programming was confused about two different time systems.”
They set the alert for Coordinated Universal Time instead of Pacific Daylight Time.
And those earthquakes from last week are a sign of the increased seismic activity we’re in.
“Humboldt-Del Norte, offshore, on shore, is the most seismic region, not just of California, but the entire lower 48 states. We’ve actually gone through a decade between 2010 and 2019, well actually, 2021 – where we had very few earthquakes,” Dengler said. “But, starting with December 20th, 2021, we’ve seemed to gone back to a more active period where we’ve had two magnitude 6s on December 20th, then the following year, the 6.4 and the 5.4, and the earthquakes we just had last Monday. They’re kind of scattered around.”
Earthquakes still remain unpredictable, as weather does not affect when and where an earthquake will happen.
“There actually is such a thing as earthquake weather. And it lasts 365 days a year. We can have earthquake weather when it is warm and clear. We can have earthquakes during terrible rainy times,” Dengler said.
