An emergency earthquake evacuation drill of buildings will be held at the El Camino College campus on Friday, April 28.
The drill will involve the Administration, Humanities, Bookstore, and Student Services Buildings, lasting from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
At 10 a.m., an emergency broadcast by the El Camino College Police Chief will be sent to telephones and public address systems in those buildings.
A separate emergency broadcast will be sent to the Student Services building to test out their systems eight minutes later.
At 10:10 a.m., a communications operator at the emergency operations center, located at the campus police building, will announce the start of the drill through a handheld radio to the building captains, who are officials in charge of giving instructions and leading their respective building’s evacuations.
Students and employees will be directed to leave the buildings and head to specific gathering areas by a floor leader, who checks each building’s floors for anyone who hasn’t evacuated yet.
At 10:45 a.m., a roll call will be held for building captains to check if everyone in the building has been evacuated. Once floor leaders confirm to their respective building captains that everyone has been evacuated, the captains report back to the emergency operations center, giving an “all clear” signal.
At 11 a.m., the emergency operations center will start allowing students and employees back into the buildings.
A final broadcast will be sent to the buildings’ telephones and public address systems at 11:20 a.m. indicating that the evacuation drill has been completed.
Director of Workplace Safety and Risk Management Leobardo Barrera said the drill was scheduled for a day when there are fewer people on campus.
“You’re talking about multiple classes in the Humanities Building, and deans and directors and meetings,” Barrera said. “It just worked out naturally that Friday was the best day to have the emergency operations exercise.”
Although the exercise is based off of an earthquake evacuation, it also aims to improve the current overall evacuation plans.
“We want to continue to build our efficacy and improve on our already good plan that we have on campus,” Barrera said.
