El Camino to participate in statewide earthquake drill Thursday

“I froze”, said Hart, who leads the school district of 650 students in the small community north of Oklahoma City.

The “Earthquake Cottage” at last year’s shakeout event.

Earthquakes can be a scary event.

As part of the on-campus drill, students, faculty, and staff will practice the “drop, cover, and hold on!” drill, as well as other aspects of the emergency plan. On November. 30, 2014, a magnitude 4.7 quake near Sedona, Arizona, rocked central and northern Arizona and may have been felt by an estimated 470,000 people.

“We do have earthquakes, but in general we’re fortunate that we don’t have them all the time”.

“By making drop, cover and hold our instinctive reaction as soon as we feel shaking start, we can give ourselves a much greater chance of getting through an quake unscathed”, she said. “Don’t do that. Folks that are right now at work, get your colleagues, get under a desk, cover your head and hold onto something like the leg of a table, and be ready, because things that are falling can kill you”. “Nationwide, almost 19 million people are registered for the drills, FEMA said”.

Schools and universities account for most of the participants in the simultaneous disaster drill, organized by the quake Country Alliance, that has spread well beyond California to many other states and countries.

ShakeOut began in Southern California in 2008 as a drill created to educate the public about how to protect themselves during a large natural disaster, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency said.

St. Louis Fire Department Captain Garon Mosby says first responders know what they have to do, but it may take them 14, 48 even 72-hours to reach you.

“While Thursday is a drill, we never know when we may have to drop, cover and hold for real”.

The region is home to several active seismic zones capable of producing damaging earthquakes, including the New Madrid and Wabash Valley Seismic Zones.

“It’s a great intro and something people can play that adds impetus to the drill”, Ezelle said.