Earthquake Notifications!

Does it seems like earthquakes have been happening more often? I mean Haiti 7.0, Chile 8.8, Baja CA 7.2, Sumatra 7.7, all of these YTD! And these earthquakes are causing lots of damage to the places they shake. Not long ago I subscribed to the US Geological Survey's Earthquake Notification System (ENS). There are a lot of earthquakes that happen around the world on a daily basis. Most are below 3.0 magnitude, however so you most likely will not want to be notified about all of them.

For this tutorial let's setup a notification to be sent to our email and cell when a 6.0 or higher quake rattles the earth somewhere in the world.

1. Register with the USGS ENS by following the link below. You should just need to enter a valid email and create a username and password for your account.

https://sslearthquake.usgs.gov/ens/register

2. Check your email and click the link that was sent in order to confirm your email address is valid. (In Hotmail I have to check my 'Junk' folder)

3. Upon following the link in the email you should be taken to the ENS homepage. It should have a map of the world with several tabs at the top and buttons on the right side.

By default you should be set up to receive earthquake notifications in the world filtering out any that are lower magnitude than 6.0. Also there should be notifications set up to send you an email for any earthquakes in the US higher than mag. 6.0.

4. To change the areas for which you would like to receive notifications click a button under 'Add New Region.'

Then simply follow directions to select or draw which region you want. Remember to give your region a name and click save.

5. If you would like to receive notifications to your cellphone you can have the system send you an email to your phone that simulates a text message.

http://lifehacker.com/software/cell-phones/send-sms-from-email-127033.php

Just take your number followed by '@' and your carrier's given domain name for sending texts to phones through email (pretty slick if you ask me) as described in the above link. Put this number in the pop up form that appears upon hitting the 'Add another email' link as in the photo above.

Make sure to select the option 'Pager/Cell Phone' next to 'Message Format.' Upon hitting 'Register Address' you will get a text with a confirmation number. Close the above pop up. Click the 'My Email Addresses' tab on your ENS homepage, and it should have a yellow box saying you have unconfirmed email addresses. Enter the confirmation code here that you got in the text and hit confirm.

The system is pretty strait forward and easy to figure out, so have fun setting it up.  By the way, the system recently got a major overhaul, like, within the last month (April 2010). When I first set mine up it was a lot different.  It has definitely changed for the better.  Also I've found that the notifications are sent out around 30 minutes after the event. I believe this is to filter out any false alarms because the system is not perfect yet.

Hopefully none of you will be having earthquakes hit your area anytime soon. Take care now.