Confusing bilingual quake alert issued to Vietnamese community

By Mary Nguyen

(This story is made possible with the support of the Institute for Nonprofit News)

Shake Alert is expanding its earthquake alert system to Alaska after warning Californians about a 5.2 earthquake last week, but questions remain about the lack useful bilingual alerts.

Thousands of Southern Californians received a warning alert from the MyShake app on their cell phones moments before a 5.2 magnitude earthquake rattled the San Diego area. Shake Alert issued the messages to thousands of Southern Californians in six languages: English, Spanish, Chinese (traditional), Tagalog, Korean, and Vietnamese. 

Huy Nguyen, lives in Garden Grove, Orange County which is north of the quake’s epicenter. He received the USGS ShakeAlert on April 14 but had problems understanding what the alert was about. Information about the Earthquake was only in English, Nguyen only speaks Vietnamese.

You can see Nguyen trying to read that alert here.

USGS sent a text alert stating there was an emergency, but Nguyen had no idea what it was about because the pertinent information was in English. 

The Vietnamese text messages he received “Cảnh báo khan cấp: Cao,” translated in English means “Emergency Alert: High.” 

The rest of the text messages stated in English, “Earthquake Detected! Drop, Hold on. Protect Yourself. – USGS ShakeAlert.”

The Shake Alert app is an earthquake early warning system that monitors for significant alerts and warns residents that strong shaking is expected imminently. Managed by CALOES, the system works by receiving information from a network of sensors that detect seismic waves. Once ShakeAlert receives data and determines the magnitude and location of the quake – cell phone alerts are sent out through the MyShake app, Android Earthquakes alerts and the Wireless Emergency Alert System.  

Investigation into alert system launched after LA wildfires 

LA. County’s emergency alert system is currently under investigation by FEMA and the FCC after problems arose during the devastating LA wildfires in January. 

Some residents did not receive an alert and claim the government failed to adequately warn and protect its residents. In addition, there was mass confusion when a bad alert was accidentally sent out to nearly 10 million residents across the County. Los Angeles County released a statement apologizing for the mishap, and removed Genasys, the vendor that was operating the software for the County’s emergency alert messaging system. CALOES now manages the County Alert System. 

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Thai community left scrambling during LA’s fire evacuation order

A recent report released by UCLA took an in-depth analysis at the impact the wildfires had on disadvantaged populations and communities. Researchers point out the significant language barriers in L.A. County’s Asian American communities. 

Nearly 50,000 Asian Americans resided in the evacuation zone areas, with over 12,000 of them needing language assistance. The authors found that the diversity of the dozens of languages calls for targeted, multilingual emergency preparedness, response and recovery strategies that go beyond a one-size-fits-all approach.

“Language accessibility for older generations is especially important,” said Melany De La Cruz-Viesca, deputy director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. “Often disaster recovery program descriptions rely on jargon, while the services can be too complicated to understand and use. This can make these groups also susceptible to scams.”  

AsAmNews has learned the day after the LA wildfires broke, on January 8, 2025, the FCC issued an order that all government entities across the US are required to issue lifesaving information in various languages through emergency text alerts. This means those wildfire alerts will not only be in English but in 13 other languages. This is an effort to disseminate accurate information to the diverse public via text message during a natural disaster such as a hurricane, tornado, wildfire or earthquake warnings.  In addition to English and American Sign Language, the FCC designated these13 languages:  Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese. The FCC has given a 30-month deadline to comply with the new rule. 

“FEMA supports the FCC’s effort to improve access to Wireless Emergency Alerts for individuals with limited English proficiency,” said Michael S. George, Associate Administrator of FEMA’s Office of National Continuity Programs. “This initiative will help alert originators communicate quickly with the public during critical emergencies.”

AsAmNews asked CALOES and LA. County about the new order, but have not received a comment.