A rare false alert from the U.S. Geological Survey’s ShakeAlert system jolted phones across California on Thursday morning, warning of a major earthquake that never happened.
The alert, issued just after 8 a.m., claimed a magnitude 5.9 earthquake had struck near Carson City, Nevada.
It was canceled within an hour, and the federal agency has since posted a notice to its main earthquakes page, saying that the “ShakeAlert EEW system released an incorrect alert for a magnitude 5.9 earthquake.”…