However, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) confirmed it was a false alarm, News.Az reports, citing ABC 7.
In a social media post, USGS ShakeAlert said the alerts were canceled and that officials are “currently looking into why the alerts were issued.” The USGS website initially showed a quake map centered in Dayton, Nevada—northeast of Carson City and Lake Tahoe—but that notice was later removed, with the site stating, “the requested event has been deleted.”
ShakeAlert, an earthquake early warning system, sends alerts to users in California, Oregon, and Washington via its app, providing seconds of warning depending on distance from the epicenter.
“The information we really need to explore is what happened, where the earthquake itself was detected at the sensors themselves out in the field. That's where we really need to do the investigation,” said de Groot. The USGS confirmed that the rest of the ShakeAlert system operated as intended.
On Thursday afternoon, Cal OES issued a statement noting that while the system is run by the USGS, it is relied upon daily to provide “critical, life-saving information when seconds matter.”
According to the Berkeley Seismological Lab, this is the first false alert since ShakeAlert began operations. Since 2019, the system has issued more than 170 correct alerts.
