a 4.1 magnitude earthquake rattled the sacramento delta. but the shakealert messages about a much larger jolt are now raising questions and calling

all library lovers. a new documentary by a san francisco filmmaker is a love letter to the san francisco main library. but first, president biden is on an urgent mission to keep the israel-hamas war from spiral into a broader conflict. as tensions begin to boil over beyond israel's borders. you're watching getting answers. i'm kristen sze. the president flew into israel for a whirlwind 7.5 hour visit. he promised new aid to the israeli government as it prepares for a ground offensive in gaza. but he also gave a word of caution. >> justice must be done. but i caution this while you feel that rage, don't be consumed by it. after nine over 11, we were enraged in the united states while we sought justice and got justice. we also made mistakes. the vast majority of palestinians are not hamas. hamas does not represent. aren't

the palestinian people. >> the president also secured a deal to get limited humanitarian aid into gaza from egypt, likely by the end of next week. joining us live now to talk about the president's delicate mission and what's at stake, binyamin bloom, associate dean for global programs and professor of law at ucla, uc law. pardon me, almost at ucla, uc law of san francisco, formerly known as hastings. professor bloom, thanks for your time. >> thank you. >> what struck you about the president's tone and statements coming out of israel today? did he make it clear what the us position is? >> yes, he did. and it's a tough it's a tough balancing act at the moment. so first of all, it's quite remarkable that a us president would travel to a war zone in the midst of bombings. so first of all, i think and that's worth that's worth noting as for his tone and he made it very clear that israel stands behind israel and its right to defend itself, but he also made

it clear that not all means may be drawn on. and he did make it clear that that israel and he in the clip that we just saw, made it very clear that israel should not be motivated by rage and should not continue to attack gaza to a point where it is starving the population in gaza. yeah >> in fact, i mean, he you know, he did reference that and he said the vast majority of palestinians are not hamas. that message seemingly aimed at israel. explain to our viewers who may also be not totally clear on the history and who those groups are, what that is about. and the distinction and why that's so important. >> okay. so hamas is a militant group that is currently the governing authority in gaza. it was democratically elected. however for the support for it has wavered over the years. and there are definitely strong components within the nearly 2

million people living in gaza who do not support hamas and fortunately, though, in these circumstances, these people are also being held hostage by their own government because by israel blocking electricity and water and food and medical supplies from from hamas and from gaza. and this population is being directly impacted, did by the operations of its government. right >> i mean, the humanitarian crisis that's mounting in gaza is just staggering. and, of course, part of the president's mission for going there is to alleviate that. but then what complicated it was, of course, that hospital bombing. right. that took hundreds of lives and the president was quick to say that that bombing was not not israel's fault. he said it was done by, quote, the other team. who is he referring to as the other team? and i wonder if you were surprised that he used those terms and if that was interpreted in some way by arab leaders and arab world leaders?

>> well, and the use of the term the other team is perhaps somewhat ambiguous. and we now have information that it was probably a misfire by the islamic jihad, which is a militant group that is closely affiliated with hamas. the president spoke based on an information that i'm not privy to, but i imagine that he would not have made this inference and reached this conclusion without having some kind of visual intelligence and documentation that that was, in fact, the case. and israel has since released footage and intelligence that supports this conclusion. so it does seem it does seem like this is based on on relatively be reliable information that this was not an israeli attack. >> yeah, i guess i'm just wondering if you think in this day and age when people are quick to label what they're not aligned with as fake news, if

that is going to be believed at all. and if that creates an, you know, bridgeable gap between what the president is trying to do right now and the arab leaders he has to work with. >> so there is quite a bit of misinformation going on around this war. and unfortunately, both parties are automatically discount and distrust anything coming from from the other side. and in that kind of an environment, it it's difficult to even negotiate it. and if there is such deep distrust east of information, even when it is well documented, then it does make it difficult to move forward. the united states in this instance s i'm by standing by by prime minister netanyahu and by taking the israeli stance on this, the united states and president biden have definitely colored the united states as an israeli ally and by definition as perhaps an enemy to definitely to hamas, but also perhaps to some arab nations

that align with what's going on here, or at least are skeptical. israeli accounts. >> yeah. can you explain why the us is now? you know, this leads into my question about being concerned about lebanon, right now in the militant group hezbollah, the british foreign office today against, you know, warned against travel there to lebanon. yeah >> so and the fear from the outset here has been that gaza would only be one front in a broader regional war with perhaps the soonest the soonest attack coming from the northern border of israel, from lebanon, and by hezbollah, which is a shiite iran. iranian backed movement. and so i guess the fear now is that israel will face a war on two fronts and perhaps on more fronts, and that this could very quickly spiral into a regional conflict, which obviously the united states and the european union and leaders in the arab world are not interested in making this a

proxy war for other regional powers. >> professor bloom, i should probably also just mention, like i did last time, that you are, i think, a dual israeli resident or a citizen, right? >> did i get that correctly? >> no longer a resident. okay. >> sorry. yeah. you were. you were born in israel. i was. okay. how concerned are you about the rising hate that we're seeing in the us now? incidents against both jewish and islamic communities as well. >> unfortunately, in this conflict has been conflated with religious animosity as well and with religious alliance, as which it is not at all within the islamic community in the bay area and within the jewish community in the bay area, there is a very broad array of opinions, but unfortunately each side has treated the other as as an enemy and think that that's something that we should be concerned about. >> so what is the best case scenario? so how do we tamp that down? how does this end in the

best way possible? and i imagine some of this has to do with preventing a mass humanitaire disaster in gaza right now. what do we need to do? >> well, the israeli government has already announced that it would open the border between egypt and gaza and allow some humanitarian aid to flow in. and that is likely one of the impact that the biden visit has had to take some pressure on israel to open the borders, at least to humanitarian aid, while making sure that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. as best case scenario, i think at this point would be if hamas was willing to release the hostages. i think that israel would probably be more amenable to ending the conflict at this point and ending the attacks on gaza. if netanyahu was able to show an accomplishment and show some kind of achievement by releasing the hostages, we don't know how many of them are still alive. we don't know their whereabouts. but without that, i'm afraid that the conflict is probably

going to drag on for quite a while and may escalate and spread to other fronts. >> a scenario that most people do not want to see. professor bloom, thank you so much for your time and your insight. >> thank you. >> well, president biden is returning home shortly, but his mission is not over tomorrow, he plans to address the nation from the oval office. he's expected to discuss the us response to that growing conflict in the middle east, as well as the ongoing war in ukraine. he's scheduled to speak at 5 p.m. you can watch that here on abc7 news and wherever you stream, war is difficult for anyone to process and comprehend specifically children. abc7 news has resources available to help you talk to your kids about war and conflict. you can go to our home page at abc7 news.com for a link to resources. all right, next, did you get that alert this morning on your phone about the earthquake today in the sacramento delta? that alert was a significant overestimate of the actual magnitude. up next, we'll talk to a scientist who

works on the algorithm that powers the app to talk about early quake predictions and warnings

eastf antioch, many people in the bay area felt the shaking, mostly in the east bay. but the bigger question now is, did you get the alert? many bay area residents got a loud notification when it happened. not only that, the alert listed the quake as a 5.7. initially see that? see the blue one, 5.7. why joining us live now to talk about the alert system and how well it worked today, doctor angie lux with the earthquake

early warning project at the berkeley seismology lab. dr. lux, thanks for your time. >> thank you for having me. >> okay. before we get into the numbers, we'll be using different terms. so i just want to make sure people understand what's the shake alert and what's the my shake app and what is the berkeley seismology lab's relationship to them? >> that's a great question. so the shake alert system is the west coast earthquake early warning system that is operated by the united states geological survey. that system creates alerts. so we detect the earthquake. we say this an earthquake has happened. this is the estimated location and the magnitude of the event. now, the us sorry, the shake alert system has a number of partners and these partners can use the alerts that we create, the messages and use those to then do whatever they want, whether that's alert the public or automated systems. in this case, my shake is one of the partners, my shake. then delivers the app or delivers the warnings to the people via a cell phone app. another user is the system. so the we can take the shake alert

messages and then send out warnings to people on their cell phones using those messages that we've seen. those are the louder sounds that can be a little bit jarring. you may have also received an alert on an android app. >> okay. so the shake alert. okay get sends the messages out. the partners, they send it out however they like. right and the problem is, i think that confuses a lot of people is that the my shake apple or came in as a 5.7 initially was that based on the initial sensors reading of the quake and i know there are usually adjustments of 0.1 or 0.2, but to go from a 5.7 to a 4.1. and then just in the last hour, back to a 4.2, what is going on? >> so there's the again, there's a number of different systems that are happening here. so just to reiterate, my shake is taking the information that was created by shake alert. so shake alert was the one that created the magnitude estimate of 5.7. my shake simply picked up that estimate and passed it along to the public again. so they get to the 5.7.

>> why was it so grossly overestimated? >> great question. shake alert is operating very, very quickly. shakealert is not prediction. so earthquake, early warning is not prediction. it's saying an earthquake has happened. and we're going to let you know that the shaking is about to reach you. so everything is happening very, very quickly. this means we could use maybe half a second or one second of data from a station. and if that station happens to have a not great estimate, that can impact the system in this particular instance, we saw that the station closest to the epicenter overestimated the magnitude pretty significantly. and when that was thrown into the mix, it made the overall magnitude estimate created by the system higher than we would have expected for that given earthquake. yeah >> have you ever seen such an overestimation before? like so large? you have this is a pretty significant one. >> so we're just we're going to definitely be going to dive into this one. some things with this one, we actually did overall a great job. the location estimate was really spot on. that's great. the rest of the system worked exactly as it should have done. now with this earthquake,

there was shaking. people did feel shaking. again, we did overestimate the magnitude. but the point of our system is to warn those people closest to the epicenter that they may feel shaking. and so in this particular instance, we did send out an alert. there was shaking. people did feel the shaking. >> also, i want to yes, many people got the alert and go, why did i get this right? like some didn't even feel it. so so explain the thresholds that different agencies use, because i understand some set it at a 5.0. others said it at a 4.0. so and we even have like a little graph, i think that was tweeted out showing the different agencies institute stations and the different magnitudes, not that one, but a different one that has all the 4.5, 4.0. but you know, why? why can't they be uniform? it's so confusing. >> that's a great question. we have different users that have different preferences. so in the case of the alerts, those are really designed for imminent life safety. and that's this is the government alert being sent out just like an amber alert that's sent out via wia as well.

so for the alerts, they have a higher threshold, so they have higher magnitude threshold of magnitude five. so they only want to send out an alert when the estimated magnitude is five or above for my shake, those are more of an opt in thing because people download the app for that particular one. there's a magnitude threshold of 4.5. in addition, we only we aim to alert people who are going to feel at least weak shaking. now, given that aim and the variation with geology and just where people are living and the building that they're in, some people may or may not feel shaking with those alerts again, we can't make everybody happy. so we're trying to send out alerts to as many people who may feel the shaking. yeah. >> and you want to let the people know if they may be impacted in some way. right. especially if they may be in danger, like experiencing the quake and the shaking at a level in which things may be falling on them, which leads me to wonder if in dividuals can actually choose choose the threshold at which they want to get an alert from whatever app they're using. right? because let's say some people are fine

getting the app this morning at nine something with the audio. the alert, the beeping. but let's say if it were 3 a.m, some people may not think that's worth waking up for. >> that's a great point. and we have different people, as you say, who want different, different threshold. that's them. you can you know, we welcome we welcome feedback and at the moment my shake doesn't allow you to set those thresholds. but that could be something we could add in the future, perhaps if that's something that people are interested in. >> see, with each quake, it's iteration and reiteration, and that's kind of how we view those minor quakes in the bay area, right? we get them a lot and it's a chance for you to test the system and perfect the system. okay. so i want to ask you, that alert came with the instruction to drop cover and hold on. what is that really mean these days? because i don't really see people actually just dropping or holding on to something like, what should we do when we get this? ideally you should drop cover and hold on. >> so as soon as you get that alert, you should take action. the thing is, with earthquake

early warning, if you are closest to that epicenter, you may get that warning only a couple of seconds before you feel strong shaking. so the idea is that we train people to receive the alert, then take immediate action. again, you might be a little further away, perhaps you're not going to feel strong shaking, but but you don't know where you are. relative to the earthquake. you don't know how strong that shaking is going to be. but we can tell you, hey, an earthquake has started. you may feel shaking. >> right? right. okay. and you're warning the time lapse is what, a second to like maybe 10s, depending on how far away you are, depending on how close you are. >> if you're right on top of the epicenter, you may not get warning. that's one of the limitations of earthquake. early warning we have to detect the earthquake before we can tell you that an earthquake has happened. but it does work very, very quickly. and you may get up to tens of seconds of warning for moderate shaking, depending on where you are. >> how big the earthquake is can make a difference. real quickly, tomorrow is the great shakeout, right? so are we going to get another alert tomorrow as an actual drill, not a actual

quake? >> i know that caused some confusion today. today was not a test. tomorrow is the test. so i know that was a lot of confusion on social media. but tomorrow we are still planning to have the great shakeout test. >> okay. all right. we've been warned. thank you so much, dr. lucks. appreciate it. >> thank you for having me so we know how to prepare for an earthquake, but are you ready? >> get a kit, make a plan. be informed if you need help, check out abc7 news.com/prepare norcal. there's really a unique way to experience san francisco's largest library ahead, we'll talk with the filmmaker who created an immersive way to share untold stories of the city's main

enough for us to escape to faraway lands and future worlds. and now one man is giving us a totally new view of san francisco's libraries through his camera lens. joining us live now is emmy nominated filmmaker james q chan to talk about the

world premiere of his new film, the main hey, james. >> hi, kristen. thank you for having me. >> oh, this is so fun. so of course, the main is about the city's main library. so how did this idea come about? why did you want to tell a story about it? >> absolutely. well, this is a special project. this was a collaboration between the san francisco arts commission and their artists in residency at the san francisco public library. lovely lovely humans and both organizations. and what this was is that it was a ten week immersive live experience where i got free range to go anywhere in the library, talk to anyone. and it was incredible. um, and then afterwards we spent a few months honing in on the project, developing it and it wasn't until, um, last summer where i spent the summer caregiving to my partner's

mother. and so her health was failing. um, her mobility was, was compromised and she was unable to do many of the things that we, we take for granted, um, grocery shopping, taking a walk or going into nature, visiting a library. and so this idea was really rooted in the, in the idea that in virtual reality we can create these spaces for those who are not necessarily able to be there physically, right? >> by the way, you neglected to mention that you are one of the four inaugural artists in residence at the library. too humble. but i'm going to just tell people that and i see that it's a 360 degree immersive experience. right? but does that mean like you don't have to put on a vr glasses or anything like that or that's not a component of it, is it? >> it's not a component. it is

one of those components because technology has has completely changed within the last even eight months. when i started working on this. so you don't need the goggles. you can actually viewers are able to access it online through the san francisco public library's youtube channel. and there you can move the cursor around, mouse around, and then mirajkar will have the goggles available. >> that is so cool. what is the story you learned about the library? i know i read your bio. you grew up in the library practically in san francisco and spent all your time there. but what did you even discover and what do you want people to know about that space? >> the library is such a cool space like if you can bottle up joy and spread it out in the world. the library, is it like the library is full of resources ? is it's a micro ecosystem, um, of incredible resource beyond the books. and so, so in this video series we have, we give

access to viewers pretty much like a seated at the table at the archives at the city archivists table. um, taking in a collection from, for instance, bruce kwan, a really, really wonderful community member whose family he arrived in the 1850s, a chinese family. and he has this incredible treasure trove. and so we have viewers like able to access be be part of the at the seat at the table and explore bruce's, uh, treasure trove. >> amazing. okay so i know you said you can check out the film, um, on the website of the main library but also there's a premiere at the library tomorrow at 5 p.m, 100 larkin and folks can just show up right? >> james that's correct. for those who are able to join us physically, they can just show up. it's free to the public and then those who are not able to join us, it's going to be

virtually online starting access for all. >> that's what the library is all about. james q chan, thank you so much. congrats on the film. the main i appreciate you. >> thank you. >>

you got two jacks. and then my grand slam. i signed a ball for you. okay. and it says papa i love you. why did you do that? because you've taught me everything about baseball. oh hunny bunny, that's so sweet. (♪) (♪)

tonight, president biden's message while in israel, and what he said about the horror at that hospital in gaza. the evidence, and who he believes is behind it. also, the alarming scene outside the u.s. embassy in beirut. what our reporter witnessed. and in the u.s. tonight, the stunning moment in the natalee holloway case.