Google earthquake alerts warned 11.4M before Venezuela’s quakes
Venezuela has no national earthquake warning system. Yet moments before two huge quakes hit on Wednesday, millions of phones lit up. Google earthquake alerts reached 11.4 million people, the company says, buying some of them up to two minutes to act.
The warnings came from Google’s Earthquake Alerts system, which turns ordinary Android phones into a vast seismic sensor network. The New York Times traced how the system worked during the disaster.
Jose Flores was driving his family to the cinema in Caracas when his wife’s phone blared. Six seconds later, the ground began to shake. “It seems like it almost predicted the earthquake,” he said.
Phones as seismometers
The trick is the accelerometer inside almost every smartphone. The same chip that rotates your screen can feel the faint tremor of a seismic wave. Google taps more than two billion of them worldwide.
A quake sends out two kinds of...
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