This post is brought to you by the number, "3."
My #3 goal for the day was, "compose a brilliant blog post." But instead, I forgot to write down the school district's definition of an earthquake and exact steps for conducting an earthquake/evacuation. So, what you read is what you get. I've acquitted myself from being brilliant.
That's right, kids! Today was the day of the Great Nevada Shakeout. The website linked here makes it a thing, and it is, but at the middle-school level it's really nothing more than a duck-and-cover followed by a fire evacuation. I say "fire evacuation" instead of "fire drill" because while making high-pitched whining noises to Miss Gokey about it, she reminded me that my middle school's regular old fire drills, because they entail walking 1/4 mile and gathering on the athletic field, are actually evacuation drills.
Earthquake drill!? But WHY, Ms. H, WHY???
Well, you see, here in Southern Nevada we live on top of a hairy network of tiny normal faults. (Incidentally, we also live on top of 1/6 of the Old Spanish Trail, but that's besides the point.) While not as beautiful or interesting as strike-slip faults like the super-destructive San Andreas, the normal faults have made Nevada #3 in the nation for the number of large earthquakes, according to the Nevada Seismological Laboratory.
Oh, San Andreas...
The worst thing about the San Andreas is that it's not my fault. Heheh.
Speaking of, this band I am connected to by one tenuous little drop of blood JUST TODAY posted a link on soundcloud.com to a song they wrote called, "It's Not My Fault." Learn it. Love it. BUY it (when you can). Oh, San Andreas...(and, ok, that there may have been the stroke of brilliance I was going for.)
Whilst a wav file played over the P.A. (hard to hear above my 38 shuffling advisory students), we all crouched down so that our heads were lower than the tables/desks for sixty seconds. Then the wav file announced, "this drill is now over," and we headed out to the athletic fields.
The burning question that was on all students' minds as we walked to the fields: In the event that an earthquake occurs and the ground is shaking beneath us, why would we leave the building and go strolling around on the shaking ground!? Valid point, tweenage brains, valid point. Answer: we assume that the building is going to fall apart, and that outside will thus be safer.
We may in fact have had a chance of passing the drill...if the gates to the athletic fields hadn't been locked. Let's be honest, though, in real life...
Well, in real life during an earthquake, unless it's huge and large pieces of furniture are flying, the students pretty much just stay in their seats and their eyes get wide until it's over. The teacher (me) puts out their (my) hands in a surfing motion and sort of sways along. I've never experienced an earthquake in Nevada. One happened, but I was oblivious to it. Come to think of it, I was oblivious to the one in Xela, as well, until the students kind of all looked at each other and one of them whimpered. As the students' eyes got wider and wider, the shaking got more vigorous and I was reduced to the surfing stance.
In real life you don't get to participate in a meeting to let you know that there is going to be a "shakeout," so. I forgive the athletic fields for being locked. What's an athletic field to do?
Earthquakes are currently trending at 3% on the Doomsday Dashboard.
I encourage all Nevadans to check out the Seismological Laboratory website for a complete guide to your earthquake preparation. For the rest of you, even the New Yorkers (heheh), I take the liberty of offering you this one little vital piece of info for your kits, which I ripped off from the Seismo Lab. Enjoy!
Hmmm. If I remember correctly our fire/earthquake drills were very similar. Everyone pretends to sit under their desk for a while (thinking about the game Seven-Up and then you get up, calmly wait in line at the door and follow the kid in front of you out to the playground. Same thing in JR high and high school. Of course growing up, on top of the San Andreas fault in Berkeley, which of course is affected by the Loma Prieta as well as others, we all knew the most a person or cluster of kids could do was just ride it out. After all they tell most people to get to a door jam or hide under a table and stay away from windows and falling objects. Hmm, 25 kids + one doorway. When it's over you're supposed to go outside and prepare for after shocks. We've all seen the doomsday scenes in which the earth opens up and swallows people and objects so that never seemed like a great option to me. Additionally, electrical wires tend to shake loose and snake their way around as another obstacle. The only and actually very important thing I can say about going outside as opposed to staying in and straightening your pictures on the wall, is in regards to natural gas mains. In the event of an earthquake people are instructed to get to the gas valve outside of the house as soon as possible and shut of the gas. We used to have a wrench just sitting by the valve through rain and shine. So, multiply one family by the near millions affected and assume that every home owner, business owner, school campus etc. each goes out to turn of the gas.... RIGHT! When you've just been hit by a major earthquake that has toppled highways and many buildings, opened fishers in the streets and tossed you around the house, not everyone thinks... "ooh got to shut the gas!" but actually most do. While it's happening you're usually thinking about who to call to check on after the rumbling stops. So, if you turn of the gas your house is less likely to blow up in case of rupture and having been sparked by let's say a severed electrical wire. Which in turn makes the main gas line less likely to blow up, on and on down and up the street. So, consider this when you're marching your kids outside, you might want to tell them that getting out of the building is not just to protect them from structural damage. In fact, if the janitor doesn't make it to the gate to open the sports field one would hope he or she is at least risking life and limb to shut off your assumed natural gas lines.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing you may want to consider is this. I personally wouldn't consider a table very strong but if that's all you have then fine. Emergency responders have noticed from experience that people who have intentionally or not, ended up behind a couch have survived even the ceilings collapsing in on them. The ceiling tends to fall in large chunks and will break over a couch but the broken part tends to just stay up acting as a lean-to. Then you just have to stay there and hope someone finds you.
One last tid-bit: What is now the School for the Blind on the UC Berkeley campus used to be freshman dorms only the were found to be not earthquake safe so they sold the property to the School of the Blind. That school lies DIRECTLY on top of the San Andreas fault. Go figure.
Oh, and one more story. My uncle (step) who has a PHD in seismology used to work in the seismology dept. on the Berkeley campus. One year we got hit by some big earthquake on the San Andreas fault and he and the rest of his earthquake buddies were up in that building, forth and fifth floors I think. When the earthquake hit, they all thought the building had been hit by a truck. They all ran downstairs to see what had happened and ran right passed all of their seismographs that were scratching out wave patterns.
-N
The natural-gas-line phenomenon is part of what is covered in the "how to survive" guide from the NV Seismological Lab. However, it is extremely unlikely that I would ever tell the students, "Unless your school staff has some major foresight, the building is going to explode." Although why protect them from the truth? Hmm. For the drill, then, it's about center of balance and for the reality, it's about automaticity. I think we probably need more drills. We constantly do fire evacuations, but we only do hard lockdown drills once a year. In actuality, the schools I have worked at have experienced more shelters-in-place and/or hard lockdowns than any other danger scenario. Thanks for the input. Be well.
ReplyDeleteSorry about all the typos Tiffany. Next time I will also try to space between paragraphs.
ReplyDelete