Earthquake Drill on Thursday: the Great Washington ShakeOut

From Mark Clemens, Washington State Emergency Management

If you haven’t signed up to participate in Washington state’s first-ever Great ShakeOut earthquake drill, time is running out. The drill occurs this Thursday, Oct. 18, at 10:18 a.m.

Please sign up now by going toshakeout.org/washington/register/. Signing up takes less than five minutes. When you do so, you’re agreeing to take part in Thursday morning’s drill by drop-cover-and-holding-on at 10:18 a.m. Signing up also means participants will do at least one more thing in the coming year to be better prepared for an earthquake (such as establish your out-of-state contact, or put some or all of your emergency kit together, etc.).

The initial goal of ShakeOut organizers was to have one million citizens and organizations of the Evergreen State sign up to participate. But ShakeOut isn’t just about the numbers. The more than 600,000 Washingtonians who have joined in (as of the end of last week) will be doing a simple drill on Thursday that will save lives in a quake, plus taking at least one more step to be better prepared to survive that quake’s aftermath.

That’s more than a million steps in the right direction.

If you have questions about the Great ShakeOut drill, please contact me at mark.clemens@mil.wa.gov or call 253-512-7006. And thanks for joining us in making this first year of the Great Washington ShakeOut a huge success.

Brendan Cowan, Director, San Juan County Department of Emergency Management, adds his comments:

I’d like to strongly encourage each of you to register online for the exercise, and to participate on the 18th. This is a simple enough thing:  you practice Drop, Cover, & Hold and take a little time to consider whether you are prepared for the inevitable major earthquake- both in how to minimize damage and how to get back to work post-quake.

By registering, you’re reminded of the event on the 18th, and will receive some basic guidance on quake preparedness. This is a relatively simple and low hassle way to encourage just a little bit of thinking about an event that we know will happen and that we know will be incredibly destructive. Big quakes don’t happen often, but spending a little time preparing is certainly worth the effort.

I (and Dave Halloran in DEM office on Orcas) are always available to come talk to groups of any size about the seismic risks here in the San Juans and how to prepare, or please take a look at the Frequently Asked Questions on quakes and tsunamis on our web site, sanjuandem.net.

The phone number for the County Department of Emergency Management is 360.370.7612.