It'll take another year before earthquake alerts will buzz Washington phones

The ShakeAlert earthquake early warning app is under development in the Northwest.

If the next "big one" shakes Washington in the coming year, most people will not get a phone alert beforehand. That's just what happened in Southern California, where two large quakes hit the greater Ridgecrest area.

Earthquake researchers along the West Coast are building phone apps called ShakeAlert to warn people seconds before one starts.

In California, the system only works in L.A. County right now. The recent earthquakes were in counties to the north of that, which is why residents near the epicenter did not receive phone alerts.

The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network wants an earthquake early warning app running in Washington and Oregon within two years. Network director Harold Tobin said they're rapidly building the program.

"We are looking at their experience in L.A., have been using that as kind of the pilot case, and work is beginning essentially on a similar app for our region and I expect within one to two years we will have that released to the public," Tobin said.

It's taking significant work to install seismic detectors across the region that would trigger the app.

"Our goal is to cover all of the state of Washington and state of Oregon, actually," Tobin said.

"Here in the Puget Sound region we're kind of ready to go with this kind of alerting as soon as we can get the piece that actually sends out the alerts. For other parts of the state we're actually actively building out new detectors."

Once public, ShakeAlert will send a phone warning to the people near the epicenter. It's already live in Washington to beta testers, such as the city of Seattle and water districts.