This classroom P-A system is getting an earthquake upgrade. Eagle Rock High School in Los Angeles, one of the first to get an earthquake early warning system hardwired into classrooms.
"Los Angles is a very active place to be for disasters of all kinds and certainly for earthquakes because of the numerous fault lines that we have," said Jill Barnes of the LA Unified School District.
Now up to a minute before shaking starts teachers and students will get a heads up, so they can get down.
"It does not change what we do in an earthquake. We're still drop, cover and hold on, but we can do it before the shaking even starts," said Barnes.
A specialized receiver gets the alerts which are then pushed out automatically to the public address system. Josh Bashium is with Early Warning Labs.
"We calculate the expected intensity here at this specific school site...at this latitude and longitude and we create custom alerts just for this school," said Bashium, CEO of Early Warning Labs.
His company creates hardware and software that interprets data from the U-S-G-S's network of sensors located up and down the west coast.
"We spend a lot of time and money and we feel our system is the fastest, most reliable and the most accurate," said Bashium.
"Things aren't going to fall on your head if you're already under the table when the shaking starts," said Barnes.
Coming soon, Early Warning Labs will release an app to the public. It will deliver the same high quality, localized earthquake alerts to mobile phones.
"We even take into account the type of soil you're standing on to tell how you how bad the shaking is going to be where you are," said Bashium.