People in schools and offices across California had a chance to practice their earthquake response Thursday morning as part of the Great California ShakeOut.
The ShakeOut is an annual opportunity encouraging people to practice earthquake safety, from getting into cover in the moments after to reviewing and updating emergency procedures.
At Lynhaven Elementary School in Campbell Thursday, students already knew the drill: get into down under cover and hold on tight, just like they would in a real earthquake.
“If there’s something bad happening, like an earthquake or something bad happens, then we know what to do immediately,” said Jasper.
Staying under secure cover is especially important during an earthquake. As The Great California ShakeOut said on its website, most injuries and deaths are actually "caused by collapsing walls and roofs, flying glass and falling objects."
The day also gave the Campbell Union School District a chance to review its emergency plans.
“We actually have a whole plan on how we would reunite our students with their parents safely and quickly,” said Superintendent Shelly Viramontez, “because I think that’s a worrisome piece for parents.”
Of course, sometimes people are in cars or are outside when an earthquake strikes. Other procedures for those kinds of situations can be found on the ShakeOut website.
BART also got in on the opportunity Thursday by bringing its trains to a brief stop.
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This year, the app MyShake — California’s official early earning app — was set to send out a test alarm to coincide with the ShakeOut at 10:19 a.m. Instead, many were awoken when they received the test alert at 3:19 a.m.
MyShake called that the result of a “configuration glitch,” with the alert set to send at 10:19 a.m. UTC — seven hours ahead of Pacific Daylight Time.
“We realize that a lot of people were woken as a result of this,” said Robert de Groot, a Communications Coordinator for the ShakeAlert system. “So we realize this and changes have already been made to make sure this never happens again.
MyShake estimated more than a million people along the West Coast got the test alert.
The Great California ShakeOut is part of the larger International ShakeOut Day, which seeks to get people to participate in earthquake drills every Oct. 19.
It’s a particularly important exercise in California because, as it wrote on its website, “all of California is at high risk compared to the rest of the county.”
“Most people in the Bay Area live less than 10 miles from a fault that can have a damaging earthquake,” it also said.
