Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Subscribe
- Navigating the ENS Webpages
- Managing Your ENS Profiles
- Managing Your Email Addresses
- Receiving ENS on Your Phone
- Reading Your Notifications
- ENS Glossary of Terms
- Disclaimer
Introduction
The U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program Earthquake Notification Service (ENS) is a customizable system provided free to everyone. New accounts receive, by default, all earthquakes with magnitude 6.0 or greater; you can subsequently customize these settings to better fit your needs. You can receive earthquake notifications for any earthquakes located by the ANSS/NEIC (Advanced National Seismic System/National Earthquake Information Center) in the U.S. and around the World. Information for earthquakes in the U.S. is generally available within 5 minutes; information for earthquakes elsewhere in the World is generally available within 30 minutes. Within the U.S. we locate earthquakes down to about M2.0, and about M4.0 for the rest of the world. Please read the DISCLAIMER at the bottom of this document.
Customizable Options:
- Functional in English and Spanish
- Specify your local time zone
- Specify affiliation
- Aftershock exclusion option
- Update Notifications option
- Defer Notifications option
- Add, remove, or change multiple email addresses (up to 15)
- Define multiple notification profiles
- Activate/Deactivate each profile individually
- Set notification magnitude thresholds for night and day hours
- Receive emails in 4 formats: HTML, long, short (for pagers and cell phones), and raw CUBE format messages.
- Create a notification profile region from a list of predefined regions
- Create a custom profile region by drawing it on a map
- Custom profile regions can be rectangles, circles, or polygons
- View the most recent events sent to your account
- Select seismic networks to receive events from (scientists only; default is to receive from all networks)
- Remove profiles
- Manage/Delete account
Subscribe
Subscribe Step 1 - Set up Account
A Spanish version of the form is available via a link at the top of the page.
Email This email address will be the primary address associated with your account. If you clicked directly on the Sign Up for ENS link, you must enter an email. After clicking Subscribe, you will need to check your email to receive your confirmation code. You will have an opportunity to enter additional email addresses using the My Email Addresses tab once you register.
Username This can be any username you want to use. If it is already taken, a red X will appear next to the field, along with a message notifying you of the error. If you ignore the error, you will see a message when you submit the form, and will be given the opportunity to choose another username.
Password/Confirm Enter a password twice, once in each box. This will allow you to login and manage your account.
Subscribe Please read the Disclaimer in the box below the Subscribe button. Clicking Subscribe will create your account then either log you in to ENS, or display a message instructing you to check your email for a confirmation code.
In order to send event notifications at the proper hours, the system will attempt to guess your time zone. After registering, you can check if it is correct by going to the Account Preferences tab. What's my time zone?
ENS will remember the language (English or Spanish) you used when filling out the form, and present content in this language whenever possible. Your language preference, along with many other account settings, can be changed in the Account Preferences tab.
Subscribe Step 2 - Confirm Email
After subscribing, you need to confirm that you own the email address you used to sign up. ENS will send you an email with a 3 digit confirmation code, which you have to enter after logging in.
Confirming your email:
- Ensures that you did not mistype your address
- Prevents other people/spam bots from signing up with your address
At this point your ENS account is set up and ready to receive event notifications.
Navigating the ENS Webpages
The yellow tabs at the top of the ENS user page allow you to manage your profiles, see recent events sent to you, manage your email addresses, edit your account information, and obtain ENS documentation. The Logout link can be found in the upper-right corner of every page.
Note that Javascript is required to use the map functionality of ENS. If you don't know what this means, you can most likely ignore this fact because over 95% of browsers already have Javascript enabled.
It is highly recommended that you use a modern browser such as Internet Explorer 7+, Firefox 2+, or Safari 3.1+.
Managing Your ENS Profiles
The ENS homepage uses a Leaflet Maps based interface to display all your profiles in one convenient place. The map allows you to manipulate existing profiles, add new profiles, change profile settings, and delete profiles.
The first time you log in, you will see a map with two default Predefined profiles for the World and the United States. The United States profile appears as a group of 3 blue polygons, while the default World appears as the green shaded rectangle. You may edit or delete one or both of these.
In Leaflet maps, you can change the view by clicking and dragging to pan, and by using the control on the left. The map automatically wraps horizontally, so, depending on your zoom level, you may see more than the entire world.
The My ENS Profiles box on the right side of the map shows a list of all of your profiles. The colors on the list correspond to the colors of the profile on the map. Click the name of a profile to edit that profile. Read more about editing profiles.
Profile Information Panel
Below the map is a blue bar, which expands when a profile is clicked or added. This is the Profile Information Panel.
The Profile Information Panel allows you to set the following options:
Profile Name You may give this profile a name. This is to help you keep track of your profiles.
Send emails to: All email addresses associated with your account will be listed here. Place a check mark next to all addresses you would like to use to receive event notifications for this profile.
Magnitude These values are the minimum magnitudes for which you want to receive notifications. Read about Daytime Magnitude and Night Magnitude.
Active Should this profile send event notifications? Check 'Yes' to allow notifications. Check 'No' to suspend/disable notifications.
Add New Profile
To add a new ENS profile, you must use the control in the top right corner of the screen. The two types of profiles are (from left to right) Predefined, and Custom.
Adding a Predefined profile
Clicking on the predefined profile button 
will hide all your existing profiles and show a blank map of the world. The Add New Region control will expand and display a list of the available predefined regions.
Picking a region from the drop down menu will add the region to the map.
When the predefined region is added to the map, the Profile Information Panel below the map was expanded.
Note that the default magnitude threshold for new profiles is M6.0. Earthquakes this large happen somewhere in the world about once every three days on
average, although it's not uncommon to go for a week or more without
having one. If you are setting up a notification profile for any place other than the most active parts of the world, you will probably want to set the threshold lower than M6.0. Appropriate values are generally something like
M4.0-M4.5, or M1.5-M2.0 for less-active areas like Europe or the eastern U.S.
The new profile will not be saved until you click Save in the Profile Information Panel.
Adding a Custom profile
Click the Custom profile button 
to start drawing a custom region. The toolbar on the left below the zoom buttons controls drawing. The three buttons are for drawing polygons, rectangles, and circles. To begin drawing, click on the one of the three draw buttons. Note that all other profiles are hidden until you finish drawing.
Drawing a polygon
Click the 'draw a polygon' button on the toolbar:
Click the map to draw the polygon. Click the last point to close the polygon.
The new profile will not be saved until you click Save in the Profile Information Panel.
Adding a Rectangular profile
Click the 'draw a rectangle' button:
Click the map to start drawing a rectangle. Note that all other profiles are hidden until you finish drawing. A rectangular profile is defined by clicking one corner and then dragging the pointer to the opposite corner.
The new profile will not be saved until you click Save in the Profile Information Panel.
Adding a Circular profile
Click the circular profile button:
Click the map to start drawing a circle. Note that all other profiles are hidden until you finish drawing. First, click the point you want to be the center of the circle. Then drag the pointer to define the radius.
Circles will become distorted near the poles. This is because Leaflet maps uses a mercator projection. In general, circles work best for defining relatively small areas. A circle with a radius over a 250 miles or 400km will be distorted by the curvature of the Earth.
The new profile will not be saved until you click Save in the Profile Information Panel.
Editing A Profile
Parameters for any ENS profile, including the two default profiles, can be modified. On custom profiles that you created, you can also change the profile's coverage area. You cannot change the coverage area of pre-defined profiles.
Click the profile on the map or the profile name in the My ENS Profiles list to edit the profile.
You will notice that the Profile Information Panel expands below the map. Here you can set any of the parameters discussed above.
All other profiles will be hidden when editing a profile.
Custom profiles have a control button on the map, indicating that the custom region is editable.
To edit a custom polygon, click on the edit control button. Then, each corner of the polygon will have a small white box, and each line segment of the polygon also has a transparent white box at its middle. Dragging these transparent boxes allows you to add new points to the polygon. To remove a point, double-click on the box at the vertex you want to remove.
You can click the Cancel button before saving to undo all changes to the current profile. When you are done editing your polygon, click the OK button to finish editing. Changes will be saved when you click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the profile form.
Click Save Changes when you are finished editing.
Rectangular profiles show four boxes at the corners, and one at the center when the rectangle is editable.
Drag the corner icons to reshape the rectangle. Click and drag the center icon to move the rectangle without changing its shape. Clicking Cancel or Discard Changes will undo all modifications to the current profile.
Click Save Changes when you are finished editing.
Circular profiles show an icon at the center and an icon on the radius when the circle is editable.
Drag the center icon to relocate the circle without changing its size.
Drag the icon on the circle's radius to resize the circle.
Click Save Changes when you are finished editing.
Notes:
- All underlined field tags are links to Help for that tag.
- You may turn any individual profile off and on without deleting it by clicking on the “Edit Profile” button on the My ENS Profiles page, and then checking “Yes” or “No” for the “Active” option.
- If your account affiliation is classified as Scientist/Network Operator, you can also specify the network(s) to receive events from, and the depth range of events as well.
Using XML to Define a Region
ENS accepts raw XML to define a region instead of selecting an area on the map. To use the raw XML, the XML must be in the following format:
For example, the following is a valid XML data:
Please check that your XML meets the following requirements:
- There must be at least 3 coordinates
- Each "<point>" element must be on the same line with latitude and longitude
- Only one "<region>" element
- Latitude and longitude may use up to 3 decimal places
- XML header should not be used
- Maximum of 20 latitude/longitude points
- UTF-8 encoded
Managing Your Email Addresses
ENS allows you to associate multiple email addresses with your account. Click on the My Email Addresses tab to show a list of the addresses you currently have registered with ENS.
Each email address has several options you can customize:
Message Format ENS messages are available in four different formats. The standard HTML format displays the event message in a nice webpage-like format, with a link to the main earthquake web site page for that earthquake. Most users will want to choose HTML format. For information on the other formats, see Message Format details below.
Day Begins and Day Ends Day and night time windows are associated with each individual email address. Day and night hours are only really relevant for pagers or cellphones, where you might want to designate a night-time where you would receive fewer notifications. For an email account, set the start and end times both to 00:00 in order to have your daytime magnitude limit in place 24 hours.
You need to specify hours to be considered 'daytime'. Times are based on a 24-hour clock. The 'end' value must be equal to or greater than the 'begin' value, and both must be in the range of 0-23 hours. If the day and night hours are both set to 00, then all hours will be considered 'daytime' and you will get all notifications for events greater than your specified daytime magnitude threshold. Note that the hours are specified in local standard time in your time zone that you specified when you opened your ENS account. If you need to change your time zone, use the Account Preferences tab on the main page.
The purpose of having your time zone in the system is so that messages sent to you can include the time the earthquake occurred in your time zone. If the time is off by one hour, it is probably because your time zone observes Daylight Saving or Summer Time. The time zone setting in your account is based on how far east or west you are from the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, England. The adoption of Summer Time is a politically determined thing. Since our system does not know your address or even what country you are in, it has no way of knowing whether or not your area observes Summer Time. If your area observes Summer Time, you can compensate for this by changing your time zone one hour to the east during Summer Time.
Using this list, you can change the options for the address. You must click Save after making changes.
To remove an address from your account, simply click the Delete button. You will be presented with a dialog box asking you if you really want to delete the address.
Register a new address
To associate another email address with your ENS account, click the Add Another Email Address button located below the list of addresses. You will be presented with a popup message like the following:
Replaces This option is only necessary if you want to replace an existing address.
The options in this dialog box are explained above under the Managing Your Email Addresses header.
Click Register Address to submit the form. You will need to check your email to receive your confirmation number.
This number needs to be entered in the box on the main page. You may need to refresh the page to see the confirmation box. If you cannot get this box to appear, you can confirm the email with this confirmation page.
Receiving ENS on Your Phone
ENS can send to mobile phones as long as they are capable of receiving SMS (short message service) messages via email. Most phone providers have an email-to-SMS gateway, and the address for your phone will be something like:
1234567890@yourphonecompany.net
There is a pretty comprehensive list of these gateways at:
- https://www.lifewire.com/sms-gateway-from-email-to-sms-text-message-2495456
- https://freesmsgateway.info
- https://smsemailgateway.com
When you find the address to send SMS to your phone, you can register it in ENS as an additional email address on your account. Be sure to select the 'short' format for the messages to a phone.
One other thing to consider for registering a phone is to set your day and night hours. That way, you can have a lower magnitude threshold for the day, and have it only wake you up at night for larger quakes. If you want to know about every quake, but don't want to be disturbed at night, set the 'Defer' option under the 'Account Preferences' tab. This will set the system so that it will still wake you up in the night for the big earthquakes, but it will hold nighttime messages about small ones until morning for earthquakes that are above your day threshold but below your nighttime notification threshold.
Also, due to the way our system works, the addresses to send any particular earthquake to come out of the database in alphabetical order. Because of this, messages to phones come out first, since numbers sort ahead of letters. So phone messages will typically come faster than email.
Managing Your Account
ENS allows you to customize several settings related to your account. Click on the Account Preferences tab to see the list of settings. They are described below:
Your Name First and last name.
Time Zone Select your time zone, based on your offset from GMT. For areas where daylight saving time is implemented, select your time zone based on the offset for Standard Time. What's my time zone?
Preferred Language English or Spanish.
Your Affiliation Please indicate your interest in earthquake notification. If it isn't listed, write it into the “Other” box.
Aftershock Exclusion 
Large earthquakes generally will have many aftershocks. You may not wish to receive notification of all of them. This option will reduce the amount of mail you get after a large event. The ENS system will automatically define an aftershock zone and a magnitude threshold below which an earthquake will be considered an aftershock as follows: For events over M5.5 we will define an exclude region. The size of the aftershock zone is calculated according to the formula given by Wells and Coppersmith (1994).
The length is then multiplied by 2 and that number is used as the radius around the epicenter for the aftershock zone. We used a hexagon to approximate a circle. The magnitude limit is M-2 (2 units below the mainshock magnitude) within that region.
The length of time for the exclusion is based on the mainshock magnitude as follows…
- M5.5-M6.0: 10 days
- M6.0-M6.5: 20 days
- M6.5-M7.0: 30 days
- M7.0-M8.0: 60 days
- M8.0+: 120 days
This option can be turned on or off at any time on the “Account Preferences” tab.
NOTE: Aftershock exclusion is turned on by default for new ENS accounts. If you do not want to use this feature, you must turn it off.
Receive updates for events?
Occasionally ENS will send messages with an incorrect magnitude. In cases where the magnitude changes by more than 0.4 or the location changes by more than 0.5 degrees of latitude or longitude, the system will send out an update or deletion message to all users who received the original message. If you don't want to receive these updates, choose "No". If an event is deleted you will always receive the delete notification if the original magnitude meets your other setting thresholds.
Defer notifications during night hours?
Each profile has an associated day and night magnitude threshold. If an earthquake happens at night above the 'night' threshold, a message will be sent to you. If the magnitude is above the 'day' threshold, but below the 'night' level, having this option set will cause the system to generate a message to you, which will be held until the following morning. This setting also applies to event updates. Select "Yes" to delay notifications.
NOTE: This option is intended for profiles that generate messages sent to phones or pagers.
Password/Retype Password To change your password, enter a new password twice, once in each box.
Click Save Changes to store your new settings. A success message should appear below the button when your changes have been saved.
Note that you cannot change your Username.
Vacation Option
ENS allows you to disable event notifications for a period of time. This feature is a simple way to suspend notifications for all profiles and all addresses associated with your account. Note that ENS does not save messages for you during your vacation, so you will not receive a backlog of notifications when your vacation ends.
Unsubscribe
You can Unsubscribe at any time from the Account Preferences page. Additionally, you can unsubscribe individual email addresses by replying to an earthquake message with a one-line, plain-text message containing the word 'STOP'. The system will automatically remove that address from the system. If your message contains extra text, or is a non-plain-text character encoding, the administrator will have to remmove it by hand, which may take several days.
If you click the “Unsubscribe” button, the following message will appear:
If you click “Yes, unsubscribe”, you will get the following confirmation message:
Click OK to return to the ENS homepage.
If you are having trouble unsubscribing, please contact the ENS administrator: ensadmin@ens.usgs.gov
NOTE: All ENS earthquake messages contain a numeric identifier code associated with the email address they are being sent to. Long-form messages have an identifier code at the end of the subject like:
2010-03-17 17:01:01 (M3.9) BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO 32.3 -115.3 (31b86)
Short-form ENS messages have an identifier code at the end, like
this:
M6.2 21:44 5/29 -30.2 -178.1 105km SSW of Raoul Island, Kermadec Islands US c000yra7 31b86
The '31b86' is the identifier code.
If you need assistance from the ENS administrator, please forward one of these identifier codes so that the administrator can find your account in the system.
ENS Glossary of Terms
Active
Use this to mark this profile as active or inactive. This is useful for temporarily turning off email for vacations and such if you want to be able to reactivate it again without having to re-input the mail criteria. You will NOT receive any notifications that you missed after an Inactive account is set back to Active.
Address
Displayed are the email address(es) that are currently registered to your account. You may have up to 15 addresses associated with your account. To add a new address, use the 'Add New Email Address' button in the right column under the “My Email Addresses” section. This will prompt you for the address and what format messages you want to receive on it. It will then send you a confirmation message. Addresses are confirmed by sending you a random three-digit confirmation number to ensure that the address is working. Enter that number in the form provided. Addresses are not given or sold by the USGS to any outside organization. Note that for a new profile, all addresses are selected by default. If there is an address you don't want associated with this profile, then uncheck it. Privacy Policy
Affiliation
Please indicate your interest in earthquake notification.
Aftershock Exclusion
Large earthquakes generally will have many aftershocks. You may not wish to receive notification of all of them. This option will reduce the amount of mail you get after a large event. The ENS system will automatically define an aftershock zone and a magnitude threshold below which an earthquake will be considered an aftershock as follows: For events over M5.5 we will define an exclude region. The size of the aftershock zone is calculated according to the formula given by Wells and Coppersmith (1994).
The length is then multiplied by 2 and that number is used as the radius around the epicenter for the aftershock zone. We used a hexagon to approximate a circle. The magnitude limit is M-2 (2 units below the mainshock magnitude) within that region.
The length of time for the exclusion is based on the mainshock magnitude as follows…
- M5.5-M6.0: 10 days
- M6.0-M6.5: 20 days
- M6.5-M7.0: 30 days
- M7.0-M8.0: 60 days
- M8.0+: 120 days
This option can be turned on or off at any time on the “Account Preferences” tab.
Day Magnitude
This is your magnitude cutoff for daytime hours. You will be notified of any events greater than this magnitude during your specified daytime hours. See also Night Magnitude.
Day Begins/Day Ends
You need to specify hours to be considered 'daytime'. Times are based on a 24-hour clock. The 'end' value must be equal to or greater than the 'begin' value, and both must be in the range of 0-23 hours. If the day and night hours are equal, then all hours will be considered 'daytime' and you will get all notifications for events greater than your specified daytime magnitude. Note that the hours are specified in local standard time in your time zone that you specified when you opened your ENS account. If you need to change your time zone, use the 'Edit your account' function on the main page.
For an email account, start and end times of 00:00 are appropriate. Day and night hours are only really relevant for pagers or cellphones, where you might want to designate a night-time where you would receive fewer notifications.
Defer notifications during night hours
If a notification or an update occurs during your night hours that does not meet the magnitude threshold for nighttime, you will get the message at the start of the next day if you select “Yes”, and you will not get the notification or update if you select “No".
Event Depth
This option can be seen only if you indicate an affiliation of Scientist/Network Operator. Use this if you want to be notified about events in a certain area only within a certain depth range.
Language
Select your language. English and Spanish are currently the only choices.
Message Format
The message format is related to the type of account. The 'HTML' and 'long' formats are suitable for email, while the 'short' format is more appropriate for cell phones, pagers, and PDAs. The 'raw' format is a machine-readable compact format.
Example of Short Format:
M6.2 21:44 5/29 -30.2 -178.1 105km SSW of Raoul Island, Kermadec Islands US yra7 31b86
The information included is:
magnitude time (UTC) date latitude longitude descriptive location event_id email_id
Example of Long Format:
== PRELIMINARY EARTHQUAKE REPORT ==
**This event supersedes event US hsal.
Region: SOUTHERN QUEBEC, CANADA
Geographic coordinates: 45.026N, 73.881W
Magnitude: 3.7 Ml
Depth: 12 km
Universal Time (UTC): 9 Jan 2006 15:35:40
Time near the Epicenter: 9 Jan 2006 10:35:40
Local time in your area: 9 Jan 2006 08:35:40
Location with respect to nearby cities:
19 km (12 miles) NE (54 degrees) of Chateaugay, NY
23 km (15 miles) NW (310 degrees) of Altona, NY
24 km (15 miles) WNW (287 degrees) of Mooers, NY
60 km (37 miles) SSW (192 degrees) of Laval, Québec, Canada
60 km (37 miles) SSW (204 degrees) of Montréal, Québec, Canada
ADDITIONAL EARTHQUAKE PARAMETERS
__________________________________________________
event ID : LD 2006010900
version : 1
number of phases : 24
rms misfit : 0.24 seconds
horizontal location error : 0.4 km
vertical location error : 1.1 km
maximum azimuthal gap : 75 degrees
distance to nearest station : 31.3 km
Flinn-Engdahl Region Number = 447
This is a computer-generated message and has not yet been reviewed by a seismologist.
For subsequent updates, maps, and technical information, see:
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ld2006010900#executive
or
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/
CISN Southern California Management Center
Caltech Seismological Laboratory
U.S. Geological Survey
http://www.cisn.org/scmc.html
________________________________
DISCLAIMER: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ens/disclaimer.html
This email was sent to lisa@usgs.gov
You requested mail for events within the 'East Coast' region
for M2.5 between 08:00 and 23:00 and M4.0 other times.
To change your parameters or unsubscribe, go to:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ens ---
Example of HTML Format:
Most of the information is self-explanatory, but the information included in the PARAMETERS section is:
Nph - number of phases
Dmin - distance to nearest station
(km)
Rmss - rms misfit (seconds)
Gp - azimuthal gap (degrees)
M-type - magnitude type
Networks
You will only see these if you have indicated an affiliation of Scientist/Network Operator. These are the seismic networks to accept events from. You will only be notified of events declared by these networks. By default, all networks are selected (except AT, which provides preliminary solutions that are always superseded by NEIC or regional network locations within a few minutes). If you know that you want to exclude one or more, then uncheck them. Otherwise, leave them all checked. The choices are:
- CI: Southern California
- NC: Northern California
- NN: Nevada
- UU: Utah
- UW: Pacific Northwest
- AK: Alaska
- NM: New Madrid - University of Memphis
- HV: Hawaii Volcano Observatory
- PR: Puerto Rico Seismic Network
- US: NEIC worldwide network
- SE: Southeastern U.S.
- LD: Lamont-Doherty - Columbia University, New York
- MB: Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology
- WY: Yellowstone Seismic Network - Wyoming
- AR: Arizona Seismic Network
- AT: Alaska Tsunami Warning Center
- TX: Texas Seismological Network
Night Magnitude
This is your magnitude cutoff for non-daytime hours. You will be notified of any events greater than this magnitude during these hours. Typically your night magnitude will be larger than your day magnitude so that you're less likely to get notifications while you're sleeping, but there is no reason why night can't be the same as the daytime setting. It all depends you your personal schedule and when you want to receive alerts. This is only really applicable if you are having alerts sent to a pager or cell phone that can wake you up in the middle of the night. If you are having alerts sent to an email account that won't wake you up in the middle of the night, then you will probably want the night magnitude to be the same as the day magnitude. You will NOT receive any notifications that you missed after the Night Magnitude time period is over and the Day Magnitude period begins. See also Day Magnitude.
Profile Name
This is an optional field where you can enter a name for your profile. The name is used to identify the profile on your account display, and also in the footer of any messages sent to you.
Time Zone
Select your time zone, based on your offset from GMT. For areas where daylight saving time is implemented, select your time zone based on the offset for Standard Time. What's my time zone?
Updates and deletions for events
Updates are sent for previous notifications if the magnitude changes by more than 0.4 or the location changes by more than 0.5 degrees of latitude or longitude. Deletion messages are sent if the system previously sent a notification for a nonexistent event. If you do not want to receive any updates or deletions, select “No”.
DISCLAIMER
The earthquake information delivered through the Earthquake Notification Service (ENS) is preliminary. Subsequent review usually results in some revision to the data, and all users are advised to check the USGS earthquake program pages at https://earthquake.usgs.gov for updates. Data users are cautioned to consider carefully the provisional nature of the information before using it for decisions that concern personal or public safety or the conduct of business that involves substantial monetary or operational consequences. Earthquakes are a common occurrence, and many are either not large enough to cause damage or not located sufficiently close to populations centers to produce damage. E-mail alerts sent through ENS do not imply an impending threat.
ENS is an informational tool and NOT a robust earthquake or tsunami warning system. The USGS does not produce tsunami warnings. For the information about tsunamis, please refer to the information given in the NOAA website http://tsunami.gov/.
On a global basis, earthquakes of magnitude 5.0 or greater are generally reviewed and distributed by ENS within 2 hours or their occurrence. Some events of magnitude 5.0 to 6.0 in remote parts of the world, especially on mid-ocean ridges in parts of the Southern Hemisphere, may not be distributed until 24 hours after their occurrence. Within the US, widely felt earthquakes are generally distributed within 5 minutes. Additionally, processing and sending the messages typically takes 30 minutes. The USGS cannot guarantee the receipt or timeliness of an e-mail message after it has been sent.
If numerous bounced messages are received from your account, the automated system will not remove your address from the ENS mailing list. If that should happen, your mail profiles will be marked 'inactive' and the system will stop sending you mail. If you fix your address and you still want to receive e-mails, just log in and mark your profiles active.
The events which have been located by the USGS and contributing agencies should not be considered to be a complete list of ALL events M2.5+ in the US and adjacent areas and especially should not be considered to be complete lists of ALL events M4.0+ in the World. The World Data Center for Seismology, Denver (a part of the USGS National Earthquake Information Center) continues to receive data from observatories throughout the world for several months after the events occurred, and using those data, adds new events and revises existing events in later publications. For a description of these later publications and the data available, see Scientific Data.
Please address unresolved mailing list issues to: ensadmin@ens.usgs.gov.
PRA - Privacy Statement
This form is subject to the Privacy Act of 1974.
Authority
The National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP), which was first
authorized in 1977, Public Law (PL) 95–124), and most recently reauthorized
in 2004 (NEHRP Reauthorization Act of 2004, PL 108–360
Principal Purpose
The Earthquake Hazards Program provides rapid, authoritative information on
earthquakes and their impact to emergency responders, governments, facilities
managers and researchers across the country.
Routine Use
Used to allow users to report shaking intensity of earthquake events, to
allow users to receive notifications of earthquake events, and to allow
users to volunteer to have seismic instrumentation installed on their
property.
Disclosure is Voluntary
If the individual does not furnish the information requested, there will be
no adverse consequences. However, if you do not provide contact information
we may be unable to contact you for additional information to verify your
responses.
Privacy Act Statement
You are not required to provide your personal contact information in order to
submit your survey. However, if you do not provide contact information, we
may be unable to contact you for additional information to verify your
responses. If you do provide contact information, this information will only
be used to initiate follow-up communications with you. The records for this
collection will be maintained in the appropriate Privacy Act System of
Records identified as Earthquake Hazards Program Earthquake Information.
(INTERIOR/USGS-2) published at 74 FR 34033 (July 14,2009).
Paperwork Reduction Act Statement
The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. 3501 et. seq.) requires us to
inform you that this information is being collected to supplement
instrumental data and to promote public safety through better understanding
of earthquakes. Response to this request is voluntary. Public reporting for
this form is estimated to average 6 minutes per response, including the time
for reviewing instructions and completing the form. A Federal agency may not
conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection
of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB Control Number.
Comments regarding this collection of information should be directed to:
Bureau Clearance officer, U.S. Geological Survey, 807 National Center,
Reston, VA 20192.