Whole lotta West Coast ShakeAlerting going on

Thursday’s Great Shakeout drill was a scheduled test of our earthquake preparedness.

But it wasn't supposed to happen twice.

The drill was set to run at 10:19 a.m. on Thursday, and it did. But it wasn’t also meant to happen seven hours earlier, at 3:19 a.m.

Like many of you, we wondered what happened, so we rang up Angie Lux. She's a project scientist at the UC Berkeley Seismology Lab who works on earthquake early warnings. But she wants to make clear that "early" doesn't stand for 3 a.m., and says, no, she didn't flip that switch.

"I had nothing to do with this," she says. "I am part of the ShakeAlert system. I step in to help with the media for the MyShake team."

Her day started very early.

"I most certainly did get an alert at 3:19 this morning," she says. "I have been working since 3:19 trying to figure out what happened."

So, what did happen? Someone, who may never be named, made a mistake.

"We had a little bit of a snafu this morning," she says, "and it looks like it went out at 10:19 UTC time."

UTC is short for Coordinated Universal Time, formerly known as Greenwich Mean Time. Lux says the problem has been fixed, but there's a silver lining.

"I think a lot of people aren't familiar with the fact that the alert messages can push through 'Do Not Disturb' settings," she says. "And so as very inconvenient and unpleasant as it was — we definitely acknowledge that it was not fun this morning — I think it is important for people to know the capabilities of this system."

People on X, formerly known as Twitter, were up and at'em after the alert.

Monica declared: "I can confirm that a MyShake App alert will wake you up from a deep sleep. Let’s not run that 3 a.m. test again, OK?"

Jane weighed in this way: "Whoever sent out this earthquake test alert seven hours early, I hope both sides of your pillow are warm for the rest of your life."

And someone going by "your witchy aunt" down in LA said: "Very uncool to get 'a test of the earthquake warning system' at 3:19 a.m. Now my dog thinks I should definitely get up."

On a more serious note, we heard from Washington state seismologist Harold Tobin that here in the Pacific Northwest, unlike in parts of California, we don't get many reminders that we live in earthquake country, and these alerts really matter. So, here's the drill:

"Look around you, drop, cover, and hold on," Tobin says. "And what that means is, first, move away from an obvious heavy object that could fall on you, a bookshelf, a big chandelier. Drop to the ground. If you can get under something sturdy, like a table, that's great. If not, then just cover the back of your neck and your head and wait for the shaking to stop."