Speaker 1: An app to warn you about the next earthquake. I'm
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro. This is rich on Tech Daily. This app
Speaker 1: is sort of the Holy Grail of notifications, a sixty
Speaker 1: second heads up when the next big earthquake would hit.
Speaker 1: This is something that's actually a reality right now. It's
Speaker 1: just that it's in beta and not many people have access.
Speaker 1: But I'm speaking with the founder of Early Warning Labs.
Speaker 1: They created the app along with USGS, Josh Basham. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me, Rich,
Speaker 1: So tell me about the app. What's it called?
Speaker 2: First off?
Speaker 3: Yeah, app's called Quake Alert.
Speaker 2: So quake alert and what does it do?
Speaker 4: So at its core, right, just as you said, it
Speaker 4: can give you upwards of sixty seconds of warning best
Speaker 4: case scenario for an incoming earthquake. And it's not prediction, right,
Speaker 4: this is early detection. So think just like you you
Speaker 4: see lightning right before you hear the thunder the same concept.
Speaker 4: We're detecting the sound waves or the earthquake and being
Speaker 4: able to send an alert ahead of it.
Speaker 2: So you're detecting sound waves, not actual shaking. How do
Speaker 2: you do that?
Speaker 4: So through our partners, right, So, the USGS and all
Speaker 4: the fantastic universities that are involved, like Caltech, Berkeley, University Washington,
Speaker 4: and University Warrion. They have almost nine hundred sensors on
Speaker 4: the West coast which are listening twenty four to seven
Speaker 4: right for these seismic waves from the earthquake. And the
Speaker 4: good news is an earthquake creates two different types of
Speaker 4: seismic waves, pea waves and S waves.
Speaker 3: Pea waves the primary waves.
Speaker 4: They travel a little bit faster than the S waves,
Speaker 4: and that's good for us because we can detect those
Speaker 4: pea waves and those pea waves don't really cause damage.
Speaker 4: I like to kind of talk about how pets, right,
Speaker 4: people talk about their pets somehow being able to detect
Speaker 4: an earthquake before it starts shaking. Well, they're actually hearing
Speaker 4: those pea waves really, so in its essence, that's really
Speaker 4: what we're doing. Right. We have about nine hundred ish
Speaker 4: sensors out there that are detecting these pea waves real
Speaker 4: time and sending that data at the sound of light,
Speaker 4: at the speed a light rather back to the USGS,
Speaker 4: and they send that data to us, right, and we're
Speaker 4: distributing that out at the speed of light, So we're
Speaker 4: out running.
Speaker 1: The earthquake, that data comes into some sort of center
Speaker 1: that you have, and then it's ideally pushed out to
Speaker 1: this app that people have on their phones exactly, So
Speaker 1: tell me where you are right now with this system?
Speaker 2: Can anyone get this?
Speaker 4: So the you know, Unfortunately, the mobile application, we're still
Speaker 4: in the sort of the beta phase right testing it
Speaker 4: with the USGS and a core group of testers, right,
Speaker 4: university folks and city and local entities. And the hopes
Speaker 4: are that this you know, this can be released hopefully
Speaker 4: towards the end of the year. That's what we're pushing
Speaker 4: really hard for.
Speaker 1: So right now it's an app that certain people have
Speaker 1: access to, obviously a beta version, but eventually this would
Speaker 1: be something in the app store that I would literally
Speaker 1: just download and now I have a heads up.
Speaker 3: Free to everybody in California. Absolutely, that's goal.
Speaker 2: So if it's free, how is this funded?
Speaker 3: Right? Great question?
Speaker 4: So Early Warning Labs really has two different types of offerings.
Speaker 4: One is our consumer solution, and myself, coming from a
Speaker 4: background of emergency management, I saw the value of being
Speaker 4: able to protect these folks. Right. We can prevent nearly
Speaker 4: half the death and half the injury if we can
Speaker 4: just get the alert to people. So I've always wanted
Speaker 4: that to be free, right. So that's the half of
Speaker 4: the business. The other half is our commercial integration, especially
Speaker 4: automate response for big entities.
Speaker 3: So like La Metro.
Speaker 4: We've worked for the last two years with them where
Speaker 4: we will actually play the alert in their operations center
Speaker 4: and we will trigger the slowdown of all one hundred
Speaker 4: trains in LA and we're.
Speaker 3: Rolling out at the leading hospitals.
Speaker 4: Here. We have a bunch of high rise commercial buildings
Speaker 4: and condo buildings where we take the elevators closest floor
Speaker 4: and open the doors. Some say in the next big
Speaker 4: earthquake that twenty thousand people are going to be stuck
Speaker 4: in elevators. Wow, And if a building implements our solution,
Speaker 4: that problem solved. Nobody's stuck in that alert.
Speaker 2: They have that sixty seconds. You don't step in exactly,
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: Tell me how the alert works, what does the alert contain,
Speaker 1: and can you you can play me a little sample.
Speaker 3: Here's a test.
Speaker 2: Earthquake extreme shaking.
Speaker 4: So when alert comes in, you heard the audio, we
Speaker 4: say how bad the shaking is going to be. And
Speaker 4: also the user can see how much time they have,
Speaker 4: so it literally counts down to zero. And we've had
Speaker 4: a couple big earthquakes here in LA in the last
Speaker 4: couple of months, and you can actually sit and watch
Speaker 4: it count to zero, and as soon as it hits zero,
Speaker 4: within a second or two, it starts shaking and it's
Speaker 4: it's it's pretty crazy to see it, see it actually
Speaker 4: working well.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what do you do in that time? What
Speaker 1: do you do when you have a heads up for
Speaker 1: an earthquake?
Speaker 4: Most important thing, you know, if you're inside a building
Speaker 4: or an office, or your house or condo, whatever, you
Speaker 4: need to drop cover and hold on. That is just
Speaker 4: the best thing that you can do. You need to
Speaker 4: find a sturdy piece of furniture, get friends, family, kids,
Speaker 4: whatever with you, and you get under that furniture and
Speaker 4: you hold on until the shaking stops.
Speaker 3: The most important thing you can do.
Speaker 4: There's certain things you should do if you're outside right
Speaker 4: moved to a clear area away from building's power line
Speaker 4: and things like that that can fall on you. If
Speaker 4: you're in a moving car, you want to pull over
Speaker 4: and you want to stop free of hazards, free of debris.
Speaker 4: You know, you don't want to stop underneath an old overpass, right,
Speaker 4: probably not a good idea.
Speaker 3: You want to stop in an opening.
Speaker 1: In a safe spot, so I always that's really I mean,
Speaker 1: I've heard the thing where you get underneath a desk
Speaker 1: or a table or something, but I would imagine in
Speaker 1: my mind it was always safer to be out in
Speaker 1: the open somewhere.
Speaker 2: So don't try to run out of your building.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, in every big earthquake, people get killed all
Speaker 4: the time by falling debris. That's probably the worst thing
Speaker 4: you can do, you know. And there's an asterisk to
Speaker 4: that though too. There's certain buildings that just that aren't safe.
Speaker 4: I can possibly collapse, and we're really worried about schools
Speaker 4: that are out there. And doctor Lucy Jones is doing
Speaker 4: a really good job back which she was collaborating with
Speaker 4: the City of la and now with their foundation to
Speaker 4: work and identify those buildings right that are the biggest
Speaker 4: hazard to try to get them fixed before the big
Speaker 4: earthquake happens. Because there's no good answer, right, if you're
Speaker 4: in a building that's going to collapse, you know, do
Speaker 4: you run outside? Do you stay inside to get underneath
Speaker 4: the sturdy piece of furniture where we can first responders,
Speaker 4: we can actually come and find you in a survivable space.
Speaker 4: It's tricky, but most modern buildings, the best thing you
Speaker 4: can do is drop cover and hold on.
Speaker 1: So what I'm hearing is that you have the technology
Speaker 1: in place, You've got the app up and running.
Speaker 2: It's working.
Speaker 1: It worked in the past, couple of earthquakes here, So
Speaker 1: why doesn't everyone have access to this today?
Speaker 3: Good question.
Speaker 4: So the USGS, KLOS and the university partners are working
Speaker 4: really hard to finish this public education piece. That's the
Speaker 4: first hurdle, right, we need to make sure people understand
Speaker 4: the challenges of earthquake early warning, the benefits and limitations
Speaker 4: very important, and most importantly, what to do when they
Speaker 4: get an earthquake early warning. The second piece is there
Speaker 4: are some technical limitations.
Speaker 3: Right. We can't be doing like Amber alert type warning.
Speaker 3: It's too slow. Texts is too slow.
Speaker 4: So we have to use the push notification service, so
Speaker 4: through an app, right, a push notification that pops up
Speaker 4: on your screen THEIRS. Unfortunately it's fast enough now, but
Speaker 4: once we get to hundreds of thousands of people, it
Speaker 4: starts to slow down, right, And that isn't a published delay,
Speaker 4: it's just not publicly available by Apple and the Android folks.
Speaker 4: So we have to really methodically kind of roll this
Speaker 4: out towards the end of the year, bring on as
Speaker 4: many people as we can.
Speaker 3: And do some performance testing to see where it slows down.
Speaker 4: Then work with the carriers and work with Apple and
Speaker 4: the other handset folks to figure out how we can
Speaker 4: fix that.
Speaker 1: So a company like Uber that's sending out a lot
Speaker 1: of notifications, are they not all at once? Like nobody
Speaker 1: has done a half a million, a million, three million,
Speaker 1: five million at once?
Speaker 2: Is that what the problem is?
Speaker 3: Exactly?
Speaker 2: So you don't really know. If it gets to the
Speaker 2: phone late, it's worthless.
Speaker 3: Yep, exactly, it's worthless. You know.
Speaker 4: The last thing we want to do is have someone
Speaker 4: get the push notification after the shaking stopped, right, because
Speaker 4: then they're going to start losing losing trust right in
Speaker 4: the earthquake early warning system. So through ultiple different channels, right,
Speaker 4: we're we're focusing now on playing these alerts and commercial
Speaker 4: buildings right over the fire alarm system, the voice evacuation system.
Speaker 4: Any building over ten stories has to have that in
Speaker 4: Los Angeles for that matter, So we can play these
Speaker 4: alerts inside those buildings and we can actually guarantee delivery, right,
Speaker 4: We can guarantee that they're going to get it within
Speaker 4: just a few seconds and before the shaking starts.
Speaker 1: Because you've got the infrastructure in place that you built
Speaker 1: to do that. But these are consumer devices, so a
Speaker 1: lot of people listening to this are immediately going to
Speaker 1: run into their app store or Google Play and search
Speaker 1: for earthquake warning. Ye tell me about the apps that
Speaker 1: they will find. Are those legit? Do those work?
Speaker 2: Are they?
Speaker 1: I haven't searched for that, but I assume they're in there.
Speaker 1: So what are those doing? And should you stay away
Speaker 1: from those?
Speaker 4: So Quick Alert it's Quick Alert Space II to little eyes.
Speaker 4: We made it a little bit harder to find because
Speaker 4: you know, we can't activate the early warning for everybody,
Speaker 4: but they can actually download it. They can enter their
Speaker 4: email and they I should be on our wait list
Speaker 4: so they can get on a list of early access.
Speaker 4: Then we're able to bring on tens of thousands or
Speaker 4: hundreds of thousands more users. They'll be the first ones
Speaker 4: to get that invitation.
Speaker 3: So you can do that.
Speaker 4: There's also lots of other great, you know, earthquake apps
Speaker 4: out there, but it's just a's after the fact, it's
Speaker 4: not before the shaking, so our app is the only
Speaker 4: one that actually provides that. And then we were able
Speaker 4: to do that through our partnership with the USGS.
Speaker 1: How excited and are you for this technology to be
Speaker 1: in the hands of everyday people?
Speaker 3: Oh? I'm pumped them. This is my passion.
Speaker 4: For over seven years, I was a volunteer instructor for
Speaker 4: FEMA in the Citizen Courts, teaching a community Emergency Response
Speaker 4: training curriculum. And you know, one of the slides that
Speaker 4: I taught was where do we look for bodies in
Speaker 4: an earthquake? Right? What's the best thing you can do
Speaker 4: to survive in an earthquake? And this was always after
Speaker 4: the shakings happened, so people really can't do anything, you know,
Speaker 4: they're stuck in a dangerous spot. Knowing that now we
Speaker 4: can get an early warning, it's tremendous because we can
Speaker 4: get people in a safe spot which can prevent them
Speaker 4: from you know, nearly half the injuries in a big earthquake,
Speaker 4: and that's huge, that's huge for first responders. That's half
Speaker 4: the work for first responders, that's half the hospitals, that
Speaker 4: half the resources needed at hospitals.
Speaker 3: Half of the nine one one calls.
Speaker 4: Right, that's gonna make response and recovery so much better.
Speaker 4: So I'm I couldn't be more any more excited about
Speaker 4: this than I am.
Speaker 3: It's it's awesome, all right.
Speaker 2: Josh, thanks so much for joining me. Josh Basham from
Speaker 2: Early Warning Labs. Tell people the website to go.
Speaker 4: To, Yeah, early Warning Labs dot com, and then they
Speaker 4: can click on the top for the mobile app and
Speaker 4: they can sign up there too.
Speaker 1: Okay, thanks for joining me, and as always, thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to the podcast. You can find links to everything
Speaker 1: I talk about here on my website.
Speaker 2: Rich on tech dot tv, I'm Rich Niro. I'll talk
Speaker 2: to you real soon.