The first quake, which struck at 1:07 a.m., caused weak to light shaking and no damage, according to preliminary reports from the U.S. Geological Survey. The second struck at 2:06 a.m., and the third came nine minutes later, according to the USGS. All three occurred at a depth of about seven kilometers.

The epicenters of all three earthquakes were just northeast of the UC Berkeley campus in Tilden Regional Park. Tuesday morning’s earthquakes come after a magnitude-3.0 earthquake that shook the area Oct. 6. That quake also had an epicenter in Tilden Park.

The first earthquake was felt as far away as Los Altos, Pleasanton and Daly City, according to the USGS website.

Megan Messerly is a news editor. Contact her at mmesserly@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @meganmesserly.

The post Three Tilden Park earthquakes briefly shake Berkeley early Tuesday morning appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The app, developed by the lab and students Rohan Agarwal and Cora Bernard, aims to teach iPhone users about earthquakes and encourage safety.

Maps show recent earthquakes throughout the world as well as historically destructive earthquakes in California to keep users thinking about earthquakes — even when the effects are not catastrophic.

 “The app is mainly designed for people who do not yet understand earthquakes, which is something that people who do understand earthquakes worry about,” said Peggy Hellweg, the lab’s operations manager, in an email. “(We) try to help people understand about earthquakes, what their effects can be and how people can prepare themselves. This app helps.”

A 2007 study by the U.S. Geological Survey, the California Geological Survey and the Southern California Earthquake Center predicted a 63 percent probability that an earthquake of 6.7 or greater magnitude would strike the Bay Area in the next 30 years.

To prepare for such an occurrence, the app links to Get Quake Ready, an information guide developed by the lab, with tips such as how to create a disaster plan, organize a disaster supply kit and improve the structural integrity of residences.

“One of the best things about MyQuake is that it provides an easy way for people to get involved with earthquakes in their area,” said Jennifer Strauss, external relations officer at the lab. “California is earthquake country — something that residents acknowledge — but because the major earthquakes are spread out, thinking about earthquakes isn’t something that is part of most people in California’s daily lives.”

 The app’s historic feature gives descriptions of the effects of famous past earthquakes, like the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, which led to the deaths of between 700 and 3,000 people and destroyed about 28,000 buildings. The feature shows witness testimonies, old newspaper articles and pictures of the events. It also links to a video that simulates the intensity of the earthquakes.

 “This is not just a factual app,” Strauss said. “People can keep updated on earthquake information in an interactive way without having to read a research paper.”

In the future, MyQuake could also provide life-saving information about earthquakes.

 “The speed of virtual information can now travel at a rate faster than seismic waves can — someone could get an alert about an earthquake before it gets to them,” said Bruce Buffett, chair of the campus department of Earth and planetary science. “Imagine, for instance, a train moving at a high speed receives an alert and is able to slow down considerably. A few moments of advance notice could go a long way.”

Contact Nico Correia at ncorreia@dailycal.org

The post New MyQuake app educates on earthquakes appeared first on The Daily Californian.

California was one of a dozen states and countries participating in the fifth annual Great ShakeOut drill, which includes practicing “the drop, cover and hold on” response and updating emergency-preparedness plans and supplies.

“Because we have earthquakes in California, people need to know what to do to protect themselves,” said Mark Benthien, an organizer of the drill and an associate director at the Southern California Earthquake Center.

The drill comes just a day after the 23rd anniversary of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, a magnitude 6.9 quake with an epicenter near the Loma Prieta peak of the Santa Cruz mountains.

Benthien said about 14.3 million people signed up to participate worldwide, 9.4 million in California. Other ShakeOut drills were scheduled to take place at 10:18 a.m. local time in Nevada, Arizona, Alaska, Southern Italy and British Columbia, among other areas.

Selected schools in the Berkeley Unified School District, including Berkeley High School, participated in the drill, said district spokesperson Mark Coplan.

“We basically did a duck-and-cover and an evacuation drill for the entire school, which is always a bit of a project for us because we have about 3,200 students,” said Berkeley High School principal Pasquale Scuderi. “We think it went very well. We were pleased with the time in which we evacuated.”

Coplan said that although the drill was not implemented districtwide, the schools are prepared for an earthquake.

“We’ve got a pretty strong response mechanism in place, and we have an emergency operations center that is activated when there is a situation,” Coplan said.

UC Berkeley sent out messages to building managers in advance of the drill and used its siren system at 10:18 a.m. to notify the campus that the drill was taking place, said Amina Assefa, manager of the Office of Emergency Management.

Students and faculty in class did not necessarily participate because of the lack of advance notice of the drill, Assefa said.

“We didn’t want to disrupt classes, especially since we hadn’t worked with (students and faculty) ahead of time to prepare for that,” Assefa said. “We didn’t know how instructors would respond to students getting under their desk.”

Still, Assefa said future drills might be coordinated with the academic side of campus to better include students and faculty.

“Our obligation is to work with the students and faculty to be more prepared on the campus*,* and stuff like this is how we’re going to get there,” Assefa said.

The Hayward fault, which runs directly below Memorial Stadium, has the potential to produce a damaging earthquake. Scientists and engineers released a forecast in 2008 stating that the fault has a 31 percent probability of producing a magnitude 6.7 or greater earthquake before 2036, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The forecast also stated that the overall probability of at least one magnitude-6.7-or-greater earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area occurring between 2007 and 2036 is 63 percent.

In the event of an earthquake, students should follow specific instructions to protect themselves.

“Get under a sturdy table or desk, and hold on until the shaking stops, and then they should exit the building and should not re-enter the building until they’re told to do so,” Assefa said.

Contact Mitchell Handler at mhandler@dailycal.org.

The post Community participates in worldwide earthquake-preparedness drill appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The quake struck along the Hayward Fault at 9:25 a.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The epicenter was located about two miles east-southeast of Berkeley at a depth of about 4.5 miles, according to the U.S.G.S. response system, which allows residents to report whether they felt an earthquake in their city.

The coordinates provided by the system place the epicenter just south of the Claremont Hotel Club & Spa.

View 2.7 earthquake 9.28.12 in a larger map

Adelyn Baxter is the city news editor. Contact her at abaxter@dailycal.org.

The post Magnitude-2.7 earthquake reported near Berkeley appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Kelly Fang/Senior Staff

Combining smartphone technology with robotics, a UC Berkeley research team created a fleet of floating robots that they first launched on May 9 to gather data about freshwater flows in rivers and deltas.

The goal of the project, officially called the Floating Sensor Network, is to use robots that will move with the water to provide detailed, real-time maps of water flow and other information to better understand California’s inland waterways.

The robots come in two types of models — active and passive, according to Andrew Tinka, the project’s lead graduate student researcher. The active models have the ability to navigate around obstacles in rivers and streams, while the passive models drift along with the water’s current. While active models have built-in GPS systems, passive models are instead equipped with GPS-enabled smartphones that run an Android application that transmits data back to researchers.

According to Tinka, one reason for using smartphones in the passive models is the lower cost.

“The price for developing a specific measurement technology or tool for the robots costs around $500,” Tinka said. “Compare that to a $200 smartphone. The cost is much lower, especially because we’re only building 100 models.”

Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering Alexandre Bayen, the lead researcher on the project, used GPS-enabled smartphones to monitor traffic flows in his earlier research. Similar smartphone capabilities are being explored in the current project as well.

The research team is also collaborating with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and has developed a computational platform that will eventually run online in real-time to interpret and assimilate the data gathered from the robot fleet.

Qingfang Wu, a UC Berkeley graduate student researcher heading the data assimilation side of the project, said that in contrast to using only two sensors at two different points in the river, such as the ones used by the U.S. Geological Survey, this project is able to gather data from 100 different points, covering the whole area and providing more information about waterways in California than before.

Wu helped to develop the statistical computing models that process and interpret the data the robots send back to researchers.

“The challenge on the computing side is to take all this information and find the most useful information, to be able to interpret it and to use all that data in the best way,” Wu said.

Carolyn Remick, director of the Berkeley Water Center who has been following the project, says the biggest difference is that it provides a stable monitoring system that can track water movement and give a better picture of California water flows.

Tinka said he was excited for the large number of robots being used to solve the problem of water monitoring and also the smartphone technology involved in the project.

“We are taking a numerical approach and the idea is to get the job done through numbers instead of using only one sophisticated robot,” Tinka said. “Robotics can be used in unexpected and strange ways. There are new options on the table for researchers.”

The post UC Berkeley robot fleet takes over California waterways to gather data appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The first was a magnitude-3.5 quake that hit at 5:33 a.m. in El Cerrito — about four miles north of Berkeley, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake was originally thought to be of magnitude 2.9 but was upgraded to a magnitude-3.5 Monday afternoon.

The second was a magnitude-4.0 quake that also hit at 5:33 a.m. and was centered about half a mile south of the first epicenter — still about four miles from Berkeley, according to the U.S.G.S.

The quakes originated on the Hayward Fault, according to Peggy Hellweg, operations manager at the UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory. She said the larger magnitude-4.0 earthquake caused “a tiny bit of damage” to the houses that are located directly above the epicenter.

Bay Area Rapid Transit trains were stopped after the first quake and were held for about 10 minutes to check the tracks for damage, according to Bay City News.

The U.S.G.S. also reported two more earthquakes that hit after the initial two. At 6:03 a.m. and 6:29 a.m.,  East Richmond Heights saw quakes of magnitudes 2.0 and 1.1, respectively.

In 2008, forecasts indicated that there was a 31 percent chance of an earthquake of magnitude 6.7 or greater hitting the Hayward Fault line in the following 30 years, according to the 2008 Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast.

“The sad answer is that we don’t have enough small quakes to release enough energy to stop the big ones from happening,” she said.

The past five large quakes on the fault — which runs directly under the UC Berkeley campus — have occurred 140 years apart on average, and the last was in 1868.

View Earthquakes 3.5.12 in a larger map

Soumya Karlamangla is the city news editor.

The post Berkeley feels magnitude-4.0 and -3.5 earthquakes in same minute appeared first on The Daily Californian.

At 6:09 p.m. Wednesday and 9:13 a.m. Thursday, 3.5 magnitude quakes struck Crockett, Calif., which is 19 miles north of Berkeley, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The coordinates provided by the U.S.G.S. place the quake’s epicenters about one-tenth of a mile away from each other.

View Earthquakes February 15 & 16, 2012 in a larger map

Both quakes caused light shaking and little to no damage, according to the U.S.G.S. The temblors were also felt in San Francisco, Vallejo, Novato and Walnut Creek, according to the U.S.G.S. response system in which residents can report whether they felt a quake in their city.

View Earthquakes February 15 & 16, 2012 in a larger map

Soumya Karlamangla is the city news editor.

The post Magnitude 3.5 earthquakes shake Berkeley appeared first on The Daily Californian.

With an epicenter in the Berkeley Hills, the quake hit at 12:41 p.m. and had a magnitude of 1.4, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

View Earthquake 1.22.12 in a larger map

Soumya Karlamangla is the city news editor.

The post Earthquake hits north Berkeley Sunday appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The 1.2 magnitude earthquake hit at 4:49 p.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The coordinates provided by the agency put the epicenter adjacent to Birge Hall, just east of Sather Tower.

The Hayward Fault runs underneath the UC Berkeley campus.

View Earthquake 1.20.2012 in a larger map

Soumya Karlamangla is the city news editor.

The post Small earthquake centered in UC Berkeley campus Friday appeared first on The Daily Californian.

At 9:33 p.m. Monday, a magnitude .9 earthquake struck in Piedmont, a few blocks east of the intersection of Claremont and College avenues, according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey.

View 01.17.2011 earthquake in a larger map

Soumya Karlamangla is the city news editor.

The post Small earthquake hits Monday evening near Berkeley appeared first on The Daily Californian.