REGION: Millions practice for Big One

College students, schoolchildren duck under desks

By DAVE DOWNEY - Staff Writer | Thursday, November 13, 2008 6:32 PM PST ∞

Millions of Southern Californians, including hundreds of thousands of residents from San Diego and Riverside counties, covered up Thursday in the largest earthquake drill undertaken in the nation's history.

Grade school children, college students and office workers around the region practiced dropping to the floor and getting under desks or tables at 10 a.m. Thursday, the designated time for a simulated earthquake of magnitude-7.8 on the San Andreas fault.

At the same time, and continuing into the afternoon, hundreds of disaster-response workers practiced mobilizing to find and treat the numerous victims who would have been left had it been a real quake.

Organized by earthquake scientists in the Los Angeles area, the drill was aimed at getting Southern Californians ready for what they say is an inevitability: a mammoth shaker with the potential to kill thousands, injure tens of thousands and cause billions of dollars in damage.

Scientists said the region's residents aren't as prepared as the citizens of Japan, who drill annually, and they were hoping to change that.

Among those participating were about 3,600 students and professors at MiraCosta College's three North County campuses.

At 10 a.m. on the main campus in Oceanside, the drill was announced through speakers on telephones in 83 classrooms linked to the college's emergency notification system.

MiraCosta students heard the voice of Bonnie Hall, the school's director of public relations, saying, "This is a drill. An earthquake has occurred. Take cover and wait for aftershocks."

On cue, Samantha Castagna of Carlsbad dropped to the floor in the middle of an anatomy test and squeezed beneath a laboratory bench, hanging tight for two minutes while chitchatting with her friend, Latonya Bailey of Oceanside.

"It was good practice," Castagna said. "It was good to think about what you would do, or at least what you should do in an earthquake. It's been a while since we've had a big earthquake."

The last major shaker to rattle populated areas of Southern California was Northridge in 1994.

Whether Castagna would actually respond to a real temblor in textbook fashion is hard to say, she said. Castagna said she'd like to think she would duck and take cover, as a majority of scientists recommend, but she said she might not be able to resist the urge to panic and run.

Bailey said she knows exactly what she would do.

"I think people will just start running if there is a real earthquake, and I will, too," Bailey said.

While students were ducking, about 20 campus employees were gathering at the college's police office to practice implementing a plan to check on the conditions of people following the fake quake and to provide treatment for the injured.

What they found out through the drill, said campus police Chief Robert Norcross, was that there was a shortage of workers and radios.

Norcross said they also learned that the telephone notification system didn't work in all classrooms.

In one, Hall said, the emergency message showed up as a text message on a phone but was not delivered audibly so students could hear it.

"It's good to have a drill because we can look into these things," Hall said.

Throughout Southern California, 5.3 million were expected to take part in the exercise. That number included nearly 500,000 people in San Diego County and 600,000 people in Riverside County.

In both counties, grade school children were the largest groups.

At Menifee Valley Middle School in Southwest Riverside County, students in Maria Wence's math class ducked under their desks when the drill announcement came over a loudspeaker. Then the shouts started.

"Ow, my head!"

"Get under your desk."

"You at least fit under here."

The students were in the mood to joke because the quake wasn't the Big One, just a big-time simulation.

But scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey office in Pasadena say the big-time event could arrive sooner than many think.

Lucy Jones, chief scientist at the Geological Survey, said last summer that shakers like the one modeled for Thursday's exercise strike Southern California, on average, once every 150 years. And it has been 151 years since the last such temblor.

That last one was a magnitude-7.9 monster that roared down the San Andreas fault like a freight train from Paso Robles to the Cajon Pass near San Bernardino in 1857.

The scenario for the drill envisioned a 7.8 erupting on the San Andreas near the Salton Sea and ripping northwest along the fault for nearly 200 miles, killing 2,000 people and injuring 50,000.

If that scenario or something similar plays out, San Diego County largely will be spared, experts say, but will be inundated with injured people to house and treat.

For that reason, Scripps Memorial Hospital in Encinitas took the opportunity to practice tending to the injured. Doctors drilled as 100 volunteers from the Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad played roles of victims, victims' relatives, news reporters and others, said hospital spokeswoman Lisa MacDonald.

"Some of them had torn sleeves and fake blood," MacDonald said.

The county Office of Emergency Services coordinated a drill with more than 1,000 employees from 60 agencies that are called upon in disasters. For two hours after the simulated quake, they pretended the Internet, telephone lines and cell towers were down, and communicated by radio.

"We will be kind of a safe haven for the counties to the north," said Ron Lane, office director. "If the real thing happens we, as a region, will be able to respond."

Staff writer Rani Gupta contributed to this report. Contact staff writer Dave Downey at (760) 745-6611, Ext. 2623, or ddowney@nctimes.com.