Update: Oct. 19, 11:32 a.m. A correction was made to the first sentence of the story, which indicated that schools all over the United States would participate in the earthquake drill. It was clarified that the earthquake drill will only take place in California.
El Camino students and staff will be participating in the annual Great California ShakeOut earthquake drill this Thursday, Oct. 19 along with other schools and businesses across the California.
The drill is scheduled to take place at exactly 10:19 a.m. and all EC students, faculty and staff will be participating.
EC staff and students know that participating in drills of this sort are necessary and important to practice on campus, considering the recent earthquakes occurring worldwide.
Ann Garten, director of Community Relations at EC, believes that practicing during a drill makes you more prepared if anything were to ever happen.
“If you go through a drill, sometimes when the actual event happens in some cases it is almost like an automatic response kicks in,” Garten said. “People know what they’re supposed to do.”
According to Garten, each building at EC has floor captains who are responsible of making sure everyone is following the process and are evacuating the building.
Rocky Bonura, director of Business Services, who is also the EC emergency operations manager, is scheduled to be at the emergency operations center if anything were to happen, coordinating any rescue and recovery efforts.
According to Bonura, EC has building captains on campus who in every building coordinate the emergency within their buildings, and they have teams who consist of medical teams and urgent rescue teams.
“Most people have gone through the College Citizens Emergency training,” Bonura said. “All of our building captains and team leaders have that training available.”
Anthony Morales, 20, biology major, is delighted to hear that EC is well prepared in case anything were to occur on campus.
“It is important for all students to take the drills seriously,” Morales said. “Anything can happen at any minute and being prepared can help you get through an earthquake.”
Bonura feels as though EC is ready in the event an earthquake were to occur on campus.
“We’re well prepared for what we’ve experienced,” Bonura said. “We are prepared as we could be. We have been doing these earthquake drills for the past nine years.”
All students, faculty and staff are expected to “drop, cover, and hold on” then evacuate the building once cleared to do so at 10:19 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 19.
“Many students might find it repetitive because we have been doing these drills since elementary school,” Morales said. “But we will all be using what we learned if anything were to happen and we’d all be prepared.”
