Not much shakin’ in quake drill
By Frank Abderholden fabderholden@stmedianetwork.com February 7, 2012 6:52PM
Summit Elementary School students, from the left, Zander Granquist, Emily Kinser, Kaden Armstrong and Parker Roach, duck, cover and hold during an earthquake drill on the 200th anniversary of the New Madrid earthquakes, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2012 in Bloomington, Ind., as part of The Great Central U.S. ShakeOut event, a day of earthquake safety awareness promotion for nine central U.S. states. (AP Photo/Bloomington Herald-Times, Jeremy Hogan)
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Updated: March 9, 2012 8:14AM
Nothing earth shaking happened Tuesday for the Great Central United States Shakeout unless you lived in Oklahoma City, where just 15 minutes after the official 10:15 a.m. earthquake drill was completed they had 3.1 magnitude quake.
Emmons School in Antioch Township participated in the drill.
Erich Grauke, administrator for information technology, said the drill went well as kids ducked for cover under desks and tables and stayed away from the windows.
“We wanted to make sure our staff and students knew what to do,” he said, just like tornado and fire drills they have every year.
Emmons joined 549 Illinois schools, 23 colleges and universities, 284 individuals and families, 145 local governments, 41 businesses and 35 medical facilities taking part in the preparedness drill.
Drop, cover and hold on was the drill where you get down and seek shelter under a table or desk and then hold onto a leg so your cover doesn’t rattle away if a temblor hits.
“We got under our desks and held on,” said Kent McKenzie, Lake County’s Emergency Management Agency. The county also had a amateur radio group practice reporting injuries and damage and securing emergency power sources.
“There’s no way to predict them, like the one we had in McHenry recently,” he said, referring to the 2.4 quake felt by many in Lake County.
Tuesday was the 200-year anniversary of three mighty quakes that hit the central United States.
“Most people don’t know there were three earthquakes right in a row,” said McKenzie. The quakes struck in the winter of 1811-12 when at least three magnitude 7.0 or greater earthquakes struck the region near New Madrid, Mo.
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