County Employees: Please Respond to ShakeAlert Test

Your help is needed on June 27 to help local, state and federal emergency officials test ShakeAlert, the Earthquake Early Warning system.

At 11 a.m. on Thursday, June 27 a wireless emergency alert will send out the ShakeAlert test to all mobile phones in San Diego County. This will be the first countywide official test of this system.

Everyone, including County employees, is asked to go to ShakeAlertSD.org before 11 a.m. and be ready to note the exact time including seconds as seen on the web page’s clock. Then just answer a few short questions to help emergency officials improve the system.

It should only take a few minutes.

1. Go to ShakeAlertSD.org before 11 a.m. on June 27 and click on the link at the top of the survey to open the atomic clock.

2. Get the ShakeAlert WEA message on your phone. Note the exact time you got the alert down to the seconds (e.g. 11:00:04 a.m.).

3. Complete the short survey and submit. It will take less than five minutes.

Why is this important? Emergency officials are testing to see if earthquake early warning alerts could be sent over the Wireless Emergency Alert system and are trying to determine how long it takes before people receive the alerts. Seconds count in an emergency and the goal is to give people those seconds to quickly protect themselves from imminent shaking in an earthquake. The warning could prevent injuries. People may be able to drop, cover and hold on, or step away from glass windows or other potentially dangerous items that could fall on them during shaking.

The message will be sent in English, but it can be accessed in Spanish on the ShakeAlertSD.org website.

Please help make this a successful test of ShakeAlert by participating in this important collection of public feedback.