"I don't usually hear them like that. It was definitely a different noise."
'A second before quake hit' - How the alert went to phones so quickly
The alerts in this afternoon's quake were sent out to Android phone users as part of the Android Earthquake Alerts System, a trial launched in NZ and in Greece earlier this year.
It uses a physics-based approach to determine the earthquake magnitude and location.
Accelerometers built into most Android smartphones are used to detect seismic waves which indicate a potential earthquake with this signal sent to Google's earthquake detection server, along with a coarse location of where the shaking occurred.
The server then takes this information from many phones to figure out if an earthquake is happening, where it is and what its magnitude is.
Alerts are only issued for earthquakes estimated be a magnitude 4.5 or larger and are different from the National Emergency Management Agency system used to alert mobile phone users about Covid-19 lockdowns, as well as tsunamis and earthquakes.