What to know about earthquake early warning systems | Technology
What to know about earthquake early warning systems | Technology
Publish Date: 2026-06-25 15:44:00
Source Domain: www.news8000.com
As earthquakes struck from California to Venezuela to Japan, millions of people received warnings on their mobile phones, providing critical seconds to seek protection.
Venezuela was struck with a pair of deadly earthquakes Wednesday evening and Thursday morning that brought significant shaking to the northern coast of Japan. Earlier in the week residents in the U.S. state of California experienced a moderate earthquake, and at the start of June, 37 people in the Philippines died in a quake near Mindanao.
Many nations have developed systems for alerting people seconds before shaking begins, and even in countries like Venezuela that do not have such systems, Google Android Earthquake Alerts can send important warnings.
Here’s what to know:
Warning systems are used around the world
Several countries have Early Earthquake Warnings — sometimes shortened to EEW — including the United States, Mexico, Japan, Turkey, Romania, China, Italy and Taiwan, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Venezuela does not have a national EEW. Wednesday evening’s back-to-back 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes were among the strongest to strike the country in more than a century.
Still, some people in Venezuela received warnings seconds or even minutes before the shaking began through Google’s Android Earthquake Alerts system. The warning system relies on crowdsourced data from the sensors in individual cellphones to detect seismic events and send warnings to other phone users in the area.
Pericles Sánchez, a 39-year-old Venezuelan writer in Caracas, received an earthquake warning on his Android phone a few minutes before the earthquake reached his home, allowing him the time to run outside. Sánchez said his family’s house was not damaged.
“It wasn’t until we were already outside that we started to feel it,” Sánchez said.
On the U.S. West Coast,…
