A warning about a massive earthquake off the coast of California has been sent 92 years late.
A computer error caused the US Geological Survey (USGS) to issue the false alarm about the magnitude 6.8 quake.
The quake actually took place in 1925 when it laid waste to the city of Santa Barbara and caused 13 deaths.
In a statement, the USGS said its computers had "misinterpreted" data causing the alarm to be wrongly issued.
Substantial collapse News organisations across the US received the emailed alert about the quake which, if it had been real, would have been one of the largest ever recorded in California.
Few organisations reacted directly to the news because it was dated 29 June 2025 - exactly 100 years after the actual event took place.
The LA Times, which uses AI-based software to automatically write up the USGS alerts, did issue a news story based on the alarm notice.
The federal body said work it was doing to revise and update information about where the historic quake struck had caused computer systems to misinterpret the data and think it was seeing a novel event.
It apologised for causing any alarm and said it was "working to resolve the issue".
USGS high strangeness Part one: A magnitude 6.8 Santa Barbara California reported by USGS for 29th of June 2025? And then deleted
At 2.00, pm UTC, this morning USGS delivered into my email box a full report of a major mag 6.8 quake in Santa Barbara California, I receive reports from USGS on all quakes of mag 6. or higher.
I clicked on the link provided and was somewhat surprised to find a page claiming 'EVENT DELETED,' curios, I went to Santa Barbara News on my computer for more information but the only report on quakes was from a mag 3. on June the 9th, nearly two weeks ago.
As for why USGS would report a major quake in California which never happened, I can't imagine, what they were thinking about? With such massive resources I can't understand why they would make such an error, which it obviously was.
What is even stranger was the fact the report for the major quake was on 29th of June 2025 which is 7 and a half years into the future?
Have the United States Geological Survey altered historic data on their website so as not to panic the people as major quakes have risen by more than 400% since 1900?
I have checked every major quake since 1900 on the USGS website once in 2014 and once again this year and alarmingly over 1,800 quakes have been added since my initial findings...See here