Californians alerted to a powerful earthquake ... that took place 92 years ago

RESIDENTS of Los Angeles were warned of a powerful 6.8 scale earthquake that hit the state. There was just one small detail that was wrong.

It was a powerful fake quake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale.

CALIFORNIANS were sent into a panic on Wednesday afternoon as they were alerted to the news a powerful earthquake was rocking the state.

Except neither a rocking, nor a rolling, nor even a faint swaying had been felt.

The Los Angeles Times informed readers a strong earthquake had pummelled Santa Barbara, about 160km north of California’s largest city.

The US Geological Service (USGS) also chimed in warning residents of the quake that measured 6.8 on the Richter scale.

That’s stronger than the earthquake in Italy earlier this year that killed more than 30 people.

But while the great Santa Barbara quake was real, there was just one small problem. It struck almost a century ago.

“The quake did happen, but it happened in 1925,” said Rafael Abreu, a geophysicist from the US Geological Survey.

False alarm: Caltech staffer accidentally sends alert for large 1925 Santa Barbara earthquake https://t.co/zSyy4Yzmvt pic.twitter.com/oNXJRUwZFN

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) June 22, 2017

A red faced LA Times swiftly took down the tweet and admitted that a robot, cheerily called “Quakebot”, had both written and published the report by mistake.

Citizens of LA are referring to the incident as the “fake quake”.

Others have wondered if Quakebot is stronger than we think and has broken the space time continuum to send earthquakes from the distant past to haunt us in the modern day.

But how did a robot randomly write an article about an almost hundred year old natural disaster?

That’s not a quake. This is a California quake. Picture: AP Photo/Doug Pizac

Well, the LA Times says it’s not all their fault and are passing at least some of the buck to the USGS. Which has admitted its role in the fiasco

“They clicked the wrong button,” said Justin Pressfield, a spokesman for the agency. “It was human error and software,” reported CNN.

You know things are bad when an #earthquake from the distant past scares you from the future. It's like a reverse-Terminator quake pic.twitter.com/uBuWkZQxpZ

— Hector Becerra (@hbecerraLATimes) June 22, 2017

Unfortunately, some mistakes are of larger magnitude than others

— Elias Saadeh (@CarneASaadeh) June 22, 2017

I'd like to learn more about Quakebot. Sounds like a badass superhero.

— Michael Rose (@mcrose14) June 22, 2017

The fiasco began when an earthquake expert at The California Institute of Technology corrected data on the 1925 Santa Barbara earthquake. Seismologists had found out some historical earthquakes had been mistakenly located some miles away from their actual epicentre.

This innocent change set off a huge chain reaction.

The USGS were automatically notified of the change which, confusing it for a new quake, sent out an automatic alert.

Santa Barbara still looks upright following the fake quake.

The LA Times’ Quakebot reporter picked up on the alert and, you guessed it, automatically bashed out an article on the fake quake. It then hit publish which in turn automatically sent out notifications on social media.

To further confuse matters, the new alert had the quake as occurring on 29 June, 2025 — exactly a century after it did happen.

So about that 6.8 in 2025 that really happened in 1925... #FakeQuake https://t.co/6kqn7SufsT

— Rob Mayeda (@RobMayeda) June 22, 2017

In a statement posted on Twitter, the USGS said the revision of the 1925 earthquake was “misinterpreted by software as a current event. We are working to resolve the issue.”

While it was a false alarm in 2017, it was a serious event in 1925 when the real Santa Barbara quake hit.

More than 40 buildings had to be demolished, 17 people died and $15 million worth of damage was caused when the real quake hit.