NYC officials took 24 minutes to alert New Yorkers about earthquake

gothamist.com

11 points·geox··5 comments

If I lived in the city, I'd want to know what the city government was going to do to better notify the public of earthquakes, air quality, etc. This is a completely solvable problem.

Not really sure if an "alert" about an earthquake that already happened was warranted. Sure, if a bridge was closed, subways were stopped, or power went out - these are things that require people to know and change their plans and require an alert. But telling people "there's an earthquake" but nothing else does not seem to be important.

Also, I live on the coast where earthquakes are common, we have that advanced warning system mentioned in the article - there have been more misfires than valid warnings so far.

It was stated that aftershocks are a concern.

I guess the idea is if you didn't notice the initial quake then you should be warned there might be a follow up.

So what? Did the lack of immediate notification impact anything?

I was in DC for the 2011 earthquake. We don’t get them here. When it was happening I had assumed a plane or something had hit the building.

If you are manhatten, I suspect the tremor is probably not dissimilar to the vibrations felt when the Towers fell.

So knowing it’s a natural earthquake and not… something worse… is useful when something worse has already happened in recent memory.

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