Shortly after a 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck near Ridgecrest, CA, the Kern County Fire Department took to Twitter and sent out an “emergency alert” predicting another earthquake would possibly strike within minutes:
Emergency Alert. Another possible earthquake has been predicted within the next 15 minutes in or near Kern County
— Kern County Fire (@kerncountyfire) July 4, 2019
The tweet was posted at 12:18pm PT, so that means the predicted quake would have occurred at 12:33pm.
Thankfully, the fire department was wrong.
Here is a United States Geological Survey (USGS) map showing some of the earthquakes that hit around that time:
Fox News also aired the strange prediction and reported a local hospital was being evacuated. We are not sure if the evacuation was due to damage caused by the original 6.4M quake or because of the prediction itself:
Caltech scientists later confirmed that nobody can successfully predict when an earthquake will occur, although they did state there is an 80% chance a magnitude 5 aftershock and 9% chance a jolt bigger than 6.4 might happen within the next week.
Main Image Credit: NBC News
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