By: Sean Godlewski

Recently we discussed the drought ravaging California and the technology and advocacy work going into helping the situation.  A couple weeks ago, Bay-Area residents were hit with a 6.0 earthquake at 3:20 a.m. on Sunday August 24th, the epicenter of which was near Napa Valley.

The Napa quake was the strongest California quake in 25 years since the Loma Prieta quake in 1989, which measured a 6.9.

The New York Times is reporting that the earthquake resulted in about $1 billion in economic losses with around 170 people treated for injuries.

Here at Reset we are always looking for 2.0 solutions to problems we face, and since we are living in earthquake country we need to prepare for the next one. The Berkeley Earthquake Lab, located at the University of California at Berkeley has come up with a detection system that predicted the Napa quake 10 seconds before it hit.

Now that we have the technology to detect earthquakes before the shaking starts, there needs to be a way to broadcast that information. That’s where Regroup comes in. Regroup is a service for sending emergency alerts via email, text message, voice broadcast, websites, social media, etc. The alerts are based on sensor data, providing users precious seconds before an earthquake hits to get to a safe place.

While ten seconds may not seem like much, it could be enough to save lives the next time we have a major earthquake.