Warning the West Coast about the next big earthquake

For the past 10 years, the U.S. Geological Survey (along with institutions like the California Institute of Technology, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Washington, and the University of Oregon) has been developing an early warning system that would operate in high-risk states on the West Coast.

In February, at the first-ever White House Earthquake Resilience Summit, officials and researchers announced that one of the most promising seismic alert tools would be moved into beta testing—a system called ShakeAlert. The system provides residents with an earthquake warning of a few seconds to around 30 seconds, depending on the magnitude and their distance from the epicenter, so they have time to prepare.