The head of the National Seismological Service of the National Center for Seismic Research (CENAIS), Enrique Diego Arango Arias, confirmed that the seismic alarm that caused panic this Tuesday in at least nine provinces was not issued by the Cuban authorities.
According to the PhD in Sciences, it was apparently a false seismic alarm that, around three in the afternoon, sounded on Android phones and tablets alerting of an imminent earthquake.
We do not know the causes of the earthquake alert or alarm that has circulated in Cuba, whether it is related to the Android system implemented in other countries and how it functioned during the occurrence of earthquakes in Colombia and Venezuela. Perhaps someone for some reason was activated in Cuba, but I repeat, I emphasize, in Cuba seismic activity behaves normally, he stated in declarations to TV Santiago and Tele Turquino.
The alarm reached devices in Mayabeque, Granma, Holguín, Matanzas, Havana, Ciego de Ávila, Camagüey, Las Tunas, and Santiago de Cuba, and it even sounded on phones set to "do not disturb" mode, which heightened confusion among the population.
"The National Seismological Service of Cuba has not detected any type of earthquake that would trigger an alarm system on phones across the country. It has been a false alarm generated by some Android system on the phones, which is not related at all to any seismic situation in the country," emphasized the expert.
The specialist emphasized that the only entities authorized to issue seismic alerts in Cuba are the National Seismological Service and the Civil Defense General Staff: "The first ones to inform about the occurrence of a strong earthquake felt in Cuba are us [...] Beyond that, there is no other entity that can issue an alert or alarm for an earthquake in our country."
Regarding the actual state of seismic activity, the scientist ruled out any risk: "There is not even a hint of a swarm of earthquakes or anything that could indicate future increases in seismic activity."
As a possible source of the failure, Arango Arias pointed to the Google Android earthquake alert system, designed to detect earthquakes of magnitude 4.5 or higher using the accelerometers of over 2 billion devices as a distributed detection network.
That system, implemented in several countries but not officially in Cuba, may have been activated erroneously on the island, possibly influenced by the recent intense regional seismic activity: Colombia experienced a 7.4 magnitude earthquake on August 10 in Chocó, with at least 240 fatalities, and Venezuela recorded two earthquakes measuring 7.1 and 7.5 on June 24, resulting in hundreds of deaths and severe damage in Caracas.
This is not the first time Google's system has failed in this way: in February 2025, a false alarm of a 5.5 magnitude earthquake in Brazil forced the company to temporarily disable the service in that country while investigating the incident.
Hours after the mass alert, it was confirmed that a small tremor did occur with its epicenter in Ciego de Ávila on Tuesday afternoon, although there were no material damages or casualties and it was not directly related to the warning received on mobile devices.
The incident occurs during a seismically active year for Cuba: a magnitude 6.2 earthquake shook Pinar del Río on June 8, and another magnitude 6.0 struck Imías, Guantánamo, on March 17, with over 900 aftershocks in the first 24 hours.
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