We are very sorry to have alarmed our readers for an Italian earthquake which did not happen.
Earthquake-Report is informing people as fast as possible on ongoing events. We receive data from many sources and will inform the data immediately to our readers ‘as is’, also stating that if only one source reports the earthquake, it has to be confirmed by other agencies soon thereafter. The current trigger was a GDACS report (see link below) automatically updated by a computer on: 6/12/2011 2:56:57 AM UTC (6 minutes after the event).
Probably this earthquake report was based on a machine generated report which was not revised by a seismologist.
Seismological agencies do have a number of checks in their systems to avoid false reports generated by seismographs. Even after these system verification checks, every now and then an agency reports a false earthquake.
Earthquake-Report.com has many confirming triggers like : almost immediate I Did Feel The earthquake reports, a huge number of visitors coming from the earthquake country, local press, etc. None of these important triggers happened and gave us an almost immediate doubt on the reported earthquake.
We still trust GDACS however for its very fast and accurate reporting. They are very well organized and do a great job for aid agencies all over the world.
The Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS) provides near real-time alerts about natural disasters around the world and tools to facilitate response coordination, including media monitoring, map catalogs and Virtual On-Site Operations Coordination Center. GDACS is NOT a seismological agency and gets his earthquake data from reliable sources like USGS, etc.
Official GDACS report explaining the reason of the false earthquake alert
A false earthquake alert for Italy was sent out on Sunday, June 12, 2011 2:50, due to an erroneous record published by a seismological institute.
The GDACS system automatically calculates earthquake impact based on earthquake information scraped from various seismological institutes. These institutes also use automatic systems to publish information based on seismological measurements, and the information is not always immediately revised by seismologists.
This morning, a false earthquake was published by EMSC (which corrected this later), but this triggered an automatic Orange alert in GDACS. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Earlier text
We are currently 60 minutes after the reported earthquake time and still NO news from any agency which we trust for highly reliable seismological data. Therefore Earthquake-report.com calls this earthquake report false (LUCKILY!)
We ask people who have felt this earthquake to send us Felt reports (nobody confirmed this earthquake out of Italy)
This earthquake has been reported by GDACS (at this moment still the only agency)
This is the GDACS report whi reported this earthquake (report is still online)
We have NO confirmation from other agencies yet
GDACS is copying data from the seismological agencies and computes different risks to be used for aid agencies. As GDACS uses almost this data almost instantly, false reports are a possibility but are very seldom.
We have NO confirmation from another agency yet (no reports from the INGV – Italy) not from USGS, EMSC or GFZ.
The chance that this earthquake is a hoax machine generated earthquake still exists !
Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : 7.7
UTC Time : 6/12/2011 2:50:23 AM
Local time at epicenter : 6/12/2011 4:50:23 AM
Depth (Hypocenter) : 1 km
Geo-location(s) :
37km from Genova (Genoa)
Links to important maps
Google satellite map of the area showing the kind of terrain the earthquake took place
GDACS GREEN earthquake report
QuakeSOS+ and QuakeSOS free are iPhone applications developed by Armand Vervaeck, the founder of Earthquake Report. The Application simplifies immediate group communication to friends and family members (with your exact GPS location) and is feeding the users with Earthquake Report news.
The 0.99 US$ QuakeSOS+ version will support the activities of SOS Earthquakes.
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I did feel it – Ik heb het gevoeld – Το έκανα αισθάνεται – Yo lo siento – 我的确感到了 – 私はそれを感じていました- Ich habe es gefühlt – Bunu hissediyorum yaptı – لم أشعر أنه
