VOA慢速英语:False Earthquake Alarm Sends Tremors Across Twitter

This is What’s Trending Today….

Earthquakes are not uncommon in southern California. Citizens there know how to react and respond if the ground starts shaking.

On Wednesday night, many of them received an email from the U.S. Geological Survey that warned of a large earthquake. The message reported a powerful, 6.8-magnitude quake. Many people also saw similar Twitter messages from the government agency that follows seismic activity around the world.

So, they expected to feel the earth shake.

But nothing happened.

It turns out Wednesday’s message was sent by mistake.

So, how did this happen? Researchers from the California Institute of Technology say they had been using new information to relocate the center of a 1925 earthquake off Santa Barbara, California. That quake severely damaged buildings and killed 13 people.

The new information somehow caused an automated message to be sent out to email accounts and Twitter.

When automatically generated alerts said a 6.8-magnitude earthquake had struck 10 miles west of Santa Barbara, it was just a false alarm. pic.twitter.com/0EseACD3mW

— Ventura County Star (@vcstar) June 22, 2017
A statement from the USGS said the research “was misinterpreted by software as a current event.” It said it is working to fix the issue.

The fake quake report even affected newspaper writers in California and other places. They often use alerts from the USGS to begin their reports. On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times, for example, sent out a story on the quake that it had to quickly correct.

It later explained on Twitter that the newspaper has a computerized system that produces stories about earthquakes based on the USGS alerts.

But, the Times said, “The USGS alert was incorrect.”

The USGS does sometimes release false alarms. But they rarely are for quakes so big or in areas with so many people.

Wednesday’s false alarm listed the quake as taking place on June 29 -- the same day as the 1925 event. However, it reported the year as 2025.

Just got an email about an earthquake in Santa Barbara, CA from the year 2025. #timetravelingemail pic.twitter.com/UjrGJKsCKA

— Daniel Milner (@danielmilner) June 22, 2017
Such an early prediction would truly shake up the field of seismology.

And that’s What’s Trending Today.

I’m Dan Friedell.

The Associated Press reported this story. Ashley Thompson adapted it for VOA Learning English. Mario Ritter was the editor.