.Earthquake in San Jose

“Earthquakes do not follow any rule we can control. It’s a force of nature we’ll always be grappling with,” says Jay McAmis, Deputy Director in San José’s Office of Emergency Management. “That means the technology of alert systems will never be perfect.”

Unfortunately, that “never perfect” assessment demonstrated itself October 19—almost an exact 34 years after the 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta quake shook the Bay Area—when a Great California ShakeOut earthquake drill alert that was supposed to be sent out at 10:19am Pacific Time but instead went out at 10:19 UTC time—a seven-hour difference.

McAmis isn’t undermining the vital role of technology and the state’s California Earthquake Early Warning System. The program offers the smartphone application called MyShake to issue warnings through operating systems and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA). The system uses ground motion sensors across the state to detect earthquakes before people can feel them and notifies them to “Drop, cover and hold on” prior to an earthquake.

The California Earthquake Early Warning System was launched by Newsom on the heels of Loma Prieta’s 30th anniversary in the fall of 2019, and in partnership with Google to directly reach Android users. 

“It’s not every day that Silicon Valley looks to state government for state-of-the-art innovation, but that’s exactly what is happening today,” said Governor Newsom in a 2020 press release. “This announcement means that California’s world-class Earthquake Early Warning System will be a standard function on every Android phone—giving millions precious seconds to drop, cover and hold on when the big one hits.”

A statement issued by MyShake on X (formerly known as Twitter) after many people received the jarring alert at 3:19am, others at the correct 10:19am time and some not at all, read: “The test alert was sent at 3:19am Pacific Time due to a configuration glitch. We apologize to all of our users and will ensure that this will not occur in the 2024 shakeout drill. The capability of MyShake to deliver real time alerts for real earthquakes is not affected.”

McAmis says he and others in the department have concern that this and other errant alerts received by the more than 10 million people registered to participate in the Shakeout will cause increased fear and anxiety. Furthermore, people across the Bay Area may not only have received the message at the wrong time, the reported 5.7 quake in Sacramento County was inaccurate; the actual earthquake was a 4.2 magnitude.

“The state of California has been developing an earthquake alerting system based on seismic monitors placed around the state. They’ve been working for about 15 years to get them installed, especially on fault lines. The concept is that the P-waves will alert people ahead of time, but it’s still a young technology,” McAmis says. “There are all the best intentions, but adjustments need to be made. To send out a statewide or regional alert for an earthquake that was very local and of limited impact, it scares people. The messaging and unintended consequence is that it’s not refined enough. This particular alert wasn’t clear enough for the broader population, such as people who were 100 miles away and didn’t feel anything.”

According to the California Earthquake Authority, the state experiences more than 100 quakes per day, most of which are small and undetectable by humans. The average number of earthquakes that Northern California experienced with a magnitude greater than 2.0 in December 2023 was 54, approximately two per day, according to AllQuakes.com. 

“The total number of quakes above magnitude 2.0 that occurred during the [past] three days in Northern California, was six,” wrote the site, displaying a map of where each quake took place. The six shakes contributed to a 47% decrease over what the site deemed was “normal.” 

“We live in an information-consuming world. People want specifics and they want it now,” says McAmis, citing his concerns over people ignoring the alerts. “I’m concerned about the perception of crying wolf. I learned a long time ago that the first reports are usually wrong. They call these events disasters for a reason: they exceed the capacity of our systems. The best we can do is build muscle memory for improving how we respond. That means you have a plan, practice it, learn how to respond to certain signals and directions.”

It’s important to note the earthquake early-warning system has worked more impressively at other times. A bit more than a year ago, people in the San Francisco Bay Area received several seconds’ warning before they felt a magnitude 5.1 earthquake that struck under the mountains east of San Jose. 

The AlertSCC system is the County of Santa Clara’s official emergency alert and warning system that McAmis says residents can use to supplement local, state and federal warning systems for up-to-date information on emergencies, disasters and important announcements. 

The Office of Emergency Management is charged with coordinating the response and recovery efforts of the Fire Chief, Police Chief, Mayor and City Manager, along with all City staff. It partners with nonprofits and agencies to offer individuals and families training, resources and preparedness plans

“In our city, with almost a million people and only 37 fire stations, if it’s a bad earthquake, it might be a couple of days before emergency services get to you. It’s always going to be a ratio game,” says McAmis. “You can’t have a million firefighters, one for each person. Living on four of the largest fault lines in the world means you should be thinking about what you’re going to do. You have to walk through the world with your eyes wide open. What are you doing to make sure you’ll survive?”

The City of San José offers a free Community Emergency Response Teams Training (CERT) to residents in an effort to maximize disaster preparedness and teach people how to safely respond to hazards, which is part of a nationwide program involving 2,700 local CERT programs and over 600,000 volunteers. The course was developed in partnership with FEMA in September 2019 and requires a 20-hour training.

McAmis, before retiring from the military in 2004, served in the United States Army in the civil affairs department, meaning he performs a similar function at his current position: providing emergency management for rebuilding and recovery, post-war then, post-emergency now. 

Prior to coming to San José, he worked for the County of Santa Barbara and says his decades in the field broadened his world view about people working in emergency management and the populations they serve. It also exposed him to close to 70 large-scale disasters over the years. 

“I’m from Southern California, so I grew up around earthquakes. I was in Guatemala and El Salvador during their conflicts; I’ve been in tsunami events, storms, flooding, wildfires,” he says. 

In fact, just last weekend the Southern California Weather Force issued an earthquake watch for the San Andreas Fault after a foreshock was detected. “At 10:55am Pacific Time on January 5th, 2024, a magnitude 4.2 earthquake occurred along the junction point of the San Andreas and San Jacinto Fault zones,” wrote the alert. “This area last shook with a foreshock in the 1970s, which is what this might be.” The earthquake watch was lifted on Jan. 8 with no further quakes detected.

Asked about the particular challenges in San José and Santa Clara County, McAmis points to the diversity of the population. While diversity is wonderful and he celebrates how it enriches every aspect of the community, it also means that for every situation, there are multiple perspectives. “A sector that has people who work 8-to-5 and their kids go to local schools differs from one where you have people who work the night shift all the time,” he says. “The way they plan their lives are on entirely different cycles.”

In addition, language and lifestyle differences make it challenging for people to understand what are shared, similar events. “The point is to get everybody on the same page, but for that to happen, we’re making eight different documents in eight different languages. And every emergency disaster is different: the parts impacted, stressors, locations. You never know what that’s going to be so you have to prepare people for understanding the overall field of emergency medical and public services, the front line responders, the resources they need, the state and federal sectors that are part of the whole system.”

The heavy lift of reaching the city’s roughly 900,000 people, even if written or online documents are impeccable and accessible, are rendered useless if care is not taken to make them “resonate with people,” he suggests. “That’s something we continue to evolve. It’s not just translating to another language, it’s understanding how to share it with people. If you don’t engage the culture, the message could fail to get across.”

McAmis says the emergency management team is “the most engaging and dynamic group” he has ever worked with. “They have no fear of jumping into the fray to solve problems. They seek engagement with the community. For example, during Covid, we had challenges with supply chain and food. The city leadership approached the county who are responsible for the health and human services and asked, ‘How can we help? How can we help people who aren’t getting enough food to eat?’ It’s not part of the city charter, but we set up food distribution centers at schools and other locations. It wasn’t about ‘Well, that’s not my job to do that.’

“When we had the rains locally this January, we didn’t see roads flooding, but we saw the creeks and waterways filling up. Our focus was instantly on making sure unhoused people who lived near the local waterways had shelter,” says McAmis. “FEMA doesn’t, in some cases, recognize the unhoused. There’s not a federal mechanism to assist individuals who don’t have addresses. It’s a big, ongoing issue that has not been addressed at the federal level.”

As for top advice to residents (beyond the usual having an emergency kit, evacuation plan and meeting place for your family), McAmis recalls a person In Santa Barbara seeking information about flood preparedness. “I asked them where they lived and where they worked. I pointed out they cross over 12 bridges between home and work. They’d never thought about the risk they take every time they cross over a bridge. Being situationally aware and responding to that helps.”

McAmis emphasizes that emergency response begins in the home and measures taken there will improve whether an individual or a family survives or avoids preventable injuries. Demonstrating his practical, forward-thinking mindset and training, he adds, “If you have heavy objects on shelves, place them near the floor. That beautiful but heavy vase displayed up on the top? Put it lower. Roughly 80% of injuries from earthquakes come from objects falling and result in serious head and shoulder injuries.”

Jeanette Prather contributed to this article.

List of Earthquake Emergency Kit Items from Ready.gov

Basic emergency supply kits should be portable, such as one or two plastic bins or duffel bags, as well as include the following as a minimum:

• Water (one gallon per person per day for several days, for drinking and sanitation)
• Food (at least a several-day supply of non-perishable food)
• Battery-powered or hand crank radio and a NOAA Weather Radio with tone alert
• Flashlight
• First aid kit
• Extra batteries
• Whistle (to signal for help)
• Dust mask (to help filter contaminated air)
• Plastic sheeting and duct tape (to shelter in place)
• Moist towelettes, garbage bags and plastic ties (for personal sanitation)
• Wrench or pliers (to turn off utilities)
• Manual can opener (for food)
• Local maps
• Cell phone with chargers and a backup battery