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Great California ShakeOut Prepares Millions for Earthquake Response

More than 6.9 million Californians participated in the Great California ShakeOut, which included earthquake drills at schools, businesses and government offices.

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In 2007, an earthquake forecast found that California was 99.7 percent likely to experience an earthquake of magnitude 6.7 or greater in the next 30 years. To help combat the future effects of that earthquake, the state’s Emergency Management Agency and private and nonprofit organizations partnered to develop the Great California ShakeOut — the largest earthquake drill in history.

At 10:15 a.m. on Thursday, more than 6.9 million Californians in schools, businesses, nonprofit organizations, and state, county and city offices in each of the state’s 58 counties participated in the Great California ShakeOut earthquake preparedness drill.

Statewide the drills ranged from two-and-a-half minute “drop, cover and hold on” exercises in schools to full-scale run-throughs of response plans. A media advisory for major events included urban search and rescue and evacuation exercises at Los Angeles County Fire Department facilities, complete with public affairs and transfer-of-command components; evacuation of studentsand an emergency team drill at Golden West College in Orange County; a parkwide evacuation drill at Balboa Park in San Diego; an exercise at U.S. Army base at Fort Hunter Liggett; an evacuation drill and test of the emergency operations center at an adult day care facility in Palm Desert; and a test of the city’s earthquake management plan in Hayward.

The drill was organized by the Earthquake Country Alliance, which is comprised of representatives of disaster response, science, business, media, education, local community organizations and government agencies. The drill’s purpose was to train people what to do in the event of an earthquake to the point where it becomes part of their “muscle memory,” said Mark Benthien, executive director of the alliance.

This is the first year that the drill had participation from businesses, schools, government agencies and not-for-profit groups across the state. Last year’s ShakeOut exercise drew participation from 5.5 million residents who drilled what would happen if a major earthquake shook Southern California.

“It was started last year along with the Golden Guardian exercise in Southern California,” Benthien said. “A group of us decided to say, ‘What about the rest of the public and the businesses and schools and such — how do they participate?’ So we created the Great Southern California ShakeOut.”

After the first drill, Benthien received many inquiries from people wanting it to happen again. “And really it was more like they were just expecting that it was not only going to be an annual earthquake drill, but that we had already [made it annual]. It had been something we’d always been doing,” he said.

ShakeOut exercises are now planned as annual events to occur on the third Thursday in October. The next one is scheduled for Oct. 21, 2010.


[Photo courtesy of Creative Commons licensing, http://www.flickr.com/photos/abinka/ / CC BY-NC 2.0.]

 

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