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Californians take part in state-wide
earthquake drill

The Associated Press

Published: November 13, 2008

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LOS
ANGELES: Californians dropped to the ground, covered their heads
and held onto the furniture Thursday for a mock "Big One" - an earthquake drill
billed as the largest in U.S. history and aimed at testing everyone from state
leaders to students who donned fake blood to play victims.

At exactly 10 a.m., television news programs announced there was an
earthquake disaster drill, then cut to cameras in school classrooms showing
children ducking under their desks and holding onto them.

After about a minute, the drill moved into aftermath mode, with people
portraying quake victims.

The exercise was based on a hypothetical tremblor with a magnitude of 7.8 on
the Richter scale that ruptures the southern San Andreas Fault - an event that
scientists call the feared "Big One."

Such a quake would cause 1,800 deaths and $200 billion in damage,
researchers estimate.

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Local governments, emergency responders, schools, hospitals, churches,
businesses and residents were taking part. Organizers said about five million
people had signed up to participate.

"We're trying to make it a communal event," U.S. Geological Survey
seismologist Lucy Jones, who helped create the crisis scenario, said before
the event.

The minimum participation calls for people to dive for safety.

Firefighters and other emergency responders are staging full-scale exercises
complete with search-and-rescue missions and medical triaging of people posing
as casualty victims.

Shortly before the fake quake struck, students at Bishop Alemany High School
in the Mission Hills area lined up to receive makeup that would turn them into
simulated quake victims.

The San Fernando Valley school is not far from the epicenter of the 1994
Northridge quake that killed 72 people.

Fire Department workers applied fake blood, makeup and wax to create
gruesome injuries.

Patricia Esguerra, 17, sported purple cheeks and a simulated gash on her
forehead. "It feels nasty but it's for a good cause so I don't mind," said
Esguerra, who lived through the 1994 quake but remembers little
about it.

The quake drill made her consider the effects of a real temblor.

"If this is what it's going to look like, it's pretty bad," she said, peering
around at the fake casualties. "I'm a little scared."

California is the most seismically active state in the Lower 48.

The U.S. Geological Survey calculated this year that the state faces a 46
percent chance of being hit by a 7.5 or larger quake in the next 30 years with
the epicenter quite likely to be in Southern California.

Despite the known seismic risks, California has never been as organized as
Japan, which holds an annual quake drill to mark the 1923 Great Kanto
earthquake, a magnitude-8.3 temblor in Tokyo that killed more than
140,000 people.

Interest in the statewide exercise was initially low, Jones said, but peaked
after the state was jolted by a moderate quake this summer. Although a far cry
from the "Big One," the July magnitude-5.4 temblor centered in the hills east of
Los Angeles was the strongest to rattle a populated area of Southern California
since the 1994 Northridge disaster. After the shaking stopped, 400 new people
signed up for the drill, Jones said.

If such a quake like the one in the drill hit, scientists say, sections of
freeways would collapse, water and gas pipes would burst and certain high-rise
buildings and older structures would fall.

The drill coincides with an annual statewide preparedness event put on by the
state. Besides rehearsing for natural disasters, the state in the past has
responded to simulated terrorist attacks.

It is not all doom and gloom. Scientists plan to follow up the drill with a
rally in central Los Angeles on Friday.

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