A major earthquake hasn’t struck any of California’s biggest cities in more than three decades, but experts and officials say the so-called «Big One» is a matter of when, not if.
And the risk is far from isolated, even in a state this large.
«It shouldn’t come as a surprise that 70% of Californians live within 30 miles of an active fault,» California State Geologist Jeremy Lancaster said during a recent webinar. «We have seven active volcanoes; we have landslides; we have tsunamis; we have thousands of miles of active faults.»But what should you do when the earth eventually starts to rumble? That’s where Thursday’s annual ShakeOut earthquake drill comes in.
Southern California will anchor its ShakeOut drill at the Los Angeles Emergency Operations Center in downtown; the San Francisco Bay Area’s will be held in front of Oakland City Hall.
Here’s what you need to know about the drill, and how best to prepare for a seismic disaster:Drop, cover and hold on at 10:16 a.m. Thursday
This might be common sense to Californians who grew up here and remember drills in school, but maybe not so much for those who moved here from out of state. During an earthquake, the best thing you can do is to drop, cover and hold on when you feel shaking or receive an early warning alert.»Drop down to the ground. Take cover underneath a sturdy object like a table. And hold on until all the shaking has stopped,» Wendy Bohon, branch chief of seismic hazards and earthquake engineering at the California Geological Survey, said in a recent social media video.
Isn’t it safer to just run outside?
Some people might instinctually want to run outside when the shaking starts. But there are reasons why that’s not the preferred response in California.One of the most dangerous places to be in an earthquake is just outside a building, where you could be hit by falling glass or bricks. Brick buildings in particular tend to fall outward, so running out of one during an earthquake could be particularly risky, structural engineers say.