The Shake Alert app that's part of California's Early Earthquake Warning System isn't available yet in the Bay Area. But officials say it's coming soon.
If it works properly, Bay Area residents with the app will get a heads up soon before feeling the power of an earthquake like the 6.4-magnitude shaker that hit Kern County on Thursday.
The system consists of a network of sensors that detect when an earthquake is imminent. It's already at work in Southern California, and the app that gives a 10-second warning is now available to a limited number of people there.
BART has some limited use of the app in the Bay Area, but it's not yet available to the general public.
But according to Robert DeGroot of the U.S. Geological Survey, that's about to change.
"As long as all the testing goes as planned, the end of the year is sounding pretty promising for a lot of great things to happen," DeGroot told KPIX-5. "The Bay Area is essentially ready to go."
Ten seconds may not sound like much, but in bracing for an earthquake, every second counts. The sensors that detect the tremors send signals to the automated computer system that activates the app and communicates with essential services to optimize safety.
"You can slow down that train, you can close that water valve, you can open fire house doors so fire vehicles can get out," said DeGroot. "It's important to realize that we're not only having people doing things, we're having things do things."
And the app gives people precious time to seek a safe place to ride out the shaking.
It didn't quite work as planned though on Thursday, and officials are giving it a bit of a tweak.
It seems L.A. residents who have the app didn't get the alert for the quake, because by the time it reached Los Angeles, it was below magnitude 5.0, the threshold for sending an alert.
Officials said that setting will be fixed.