Fake quake: Report of major California temblor a false alarm
LOS ANGELES — The only tremors from a reported major earthquake off the California coast came on the internet.
Seismologists said Wednesday’s automatically generated report of a magnitude 6.8 quake in the Pacific Ocean 10 miles west of Santa Barbara was a false alarm based on a quake that happened in the same area nearly a century ago.
“The quake did happen, but it happened in 1925,” said Rafael Abreu, a geophysicist from the US Geological Survey.
The report caused huge ripples on Twitter, where dozens of automated tweets were generated, and concerned citizens were hoping the people of California were OK.