M 6.8 - 10 km SANTA BARBARA CHANNEL, CALIF.

[Harley]

M 6.8 - 10 km SANTA BARBARA CHANNEL, CALIF.

Preliminary Earthquake Report
Magnitude 6.8
Date-Time
29 Jun 2025 14:42:16 UTC
29 Jun 2025 07:42:16 near epicenter
29 Jun 2025 05:42:16 standard time in your timezone
Location 34.300N 119.800W
Depth 10 km
Distances
14 km (9 miles) SSE (156 degrees) of Isla Vista, CA
16 km (10 miles) S (175 degrees) of Goleta, CA
16 km (10 miles) SW (214 degrees) of downtown Santa Barbara, CA
145 km (90 miles) W (281 degrees) of Los Angeles Civic Center, CA
Location Uncertainty Horizontal: 0.0 km; Vertical 0.0 km
Parameters Nph = 0; Dmin = 0.0 km; Rmss = 0.00 seconds; Gp = 0°
Version = 0
Event ID ci 37161284
For updates, maps, and technical information see: Event Page or USGS Earthquake Hazards Program
CISN Southern California Management Center
Caltech Seismological Laboratory
U.S. Geological Survey

[Ross]

29 Jun 2025 14:42:16 UTC
29 Jun 2025 07:42:16 near epicenter
29 Jun 2025 05:42:16 standard time in your timezone

So this happened in the future...

[Harley]

Yeah, USGS Deleted it not long after they posted it.

Kinda makes one wonder about the validity of ANY of their reports doesn't it?

[Ross]

Ok, I've found this...

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

Article:

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/en...03a7050a1992b7