{"id":30490,"date":"2025-07-29T06:55:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T06:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/30490\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T06:55:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T06:55:13","slug":"google-admits-10-million-people-failed-to-receive-take-action-alert-warning-of-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/30490\/","title":{"rendered":"Google admits 10 million people failed to receive ‘take action’ alert warning of Turkey…"},"content":{"rendered":"

28 July 2025, 11:56 | Updated: 28 July 2025, 13:49<\/p>\n

\"Rescue<\/p>\n

Rescue teams search for victims in the rubble on the second day following an earthquake, in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, on February 7, 2023.<\/p>\n

Picture:
\nAlamy
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Google has admitted its earthquake early warning system failed to accurately alert 10 million people of the intensity threat of Turkey’s deadly natural disaster in 2023. <\/p>\n

Ten million people within 98 miles of the epicentre could have received sent the tech giant’s highest level alert – which would have provided up to 35 seconds of warning to find safety.<\/p>\n

But just 469 “Take Action” warnings were issued for the initial 7.8 magnitude earthquake.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

How Google’s alert appears on Android smartphones.<\/p>\n

Picture:
\nGoogle<\/p>\n

Around 500,000 people were sent a lower level warning, Google has said, which is designed for “light shaking” and is therefore not considered an urgent alert.<\/p>\n

The Android Earthquake Alerts System was launched in August 2020 in collaboration with the US Geological Survey, using phone sensors to detect earthquakes.<\/p>\n

It verifies data and sends alerts, which can arrive just seconds before quakes strike.<\/p>\n

Read more: Apple and Google may be forced to make changes over mobile platform \u2018duopoly\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Read more: Defence secretary signs agreement paving way for export of Typhoon jets to Turkey<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Citizens<\/p>\n

Citizens commemorate the losses of their people in the earthquake by holding lit candles.<\/p>\n

Picture:
\nAlamy
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

An internal investigation at Google revealed that its warning system vastly underestimated the earthquake\u2019s strength, initially ranking it a magnitude of between 4.5 and 4.9.<\/p>\n

“We continue to improve the system based on what we learn in each earthquake,” a company spokesperson told the BBC. <\/p>\n

Google acknowledged the challenges of maintaining a balance between speed and accuracy in a blog post about the alert system.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the trickiest parts of an EEW system is estimating the magnitude of an earthquake in real-time. The magnitude tells us how big the earthquake is, which in turn determines how far the shaking will travel and who needs to be alerted,\u201d it wrote. <\/p>\n

\u201cGetting this right is crucial \u2013 underestimate, and you might not warn people in danger; overestimate, and you risk sending out false alarms that erode public trust,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n

Turkey’s president Recep Erdogan described 2023’s quake as the worst disaster in the country for almost 100 years.<\/p>\n

The earthquake was so powerful it was felt as far away as Cairo. It was centred north of Gaziantep, a Turkish city about 60 miles away from Syria.<\/p>\n

In Malatya province, not far from the epicentre, 130 buildings were reported to have collapsed. <\/p>\n

Rescuers in the city of Diyarbakir were seen calling for silence as they listened for survivors in a destroyed 11-storey building, one of 15 known to have fallen there.<\/p>\n

More than\u00a033,000 people have died in the disaster, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"28 July 2025, 11:56 | Updated: 28 July 2025, 13:49 Rescue teams search for victims in the rubble…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-30490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}