Drop, cover and hold on. The Great Shakeout is today
It’s happened before and it’s going to again: A massive earthquake and tsunami will hit Washington state.
But Thursday at 10:21 a.m. it’ll all be practice when military personnel, office workers and school kids in Pierce County drop, cover and hold on while tsunami sirens wail on the coast.
The Great Washington ShakeOut is an annual drill that has residents across the state prepare for earthquakes and tsunamis and what to do when they hit.
“The goal is to get people to spend a few minutes and realize, oh, yeah, Washington is earthquake country,” said Steven Friederich of the Washington State Military Department.
Statewide, 1.3 million people are registered for Thursday’s event. In Pierce County, more than 240,000 people have registered to participate in the drill as have another 66,000 in Thurston County. It’s all part of national and international efforts.
Those numbers include participants at universities, businesses and military installations.
As school children from Gig Harbor’s Voyager Elementary to Orting High School are practicing to drop, cover and hold on, coastal residents will add another layer of prep: tsunami evacuations.
Earthquakes
Wherever you find yourself at 10:21 a.m. Thursday, you can participate in the drill whether you are registered or not, Friederich said.
“If you’re working from home, go to a dining room table and pop under that,” Friederich said. If a table isn’t available experts say you should still go the ground and cover your neck. Don’t run out of a building or, as school kids were taught years ago, stand in a doorway.
“The goal is to prevent debris from falling and hitting you,” Friederich said.
Thursday is also a good time to take stock of your emergency kit that would be needed following a major earthquake. Quakes come with no warning and there’s no time to head to the store to get supplies. Friederich said it’s also a good time to check on the safety of heavy furniture and other objects that can topple over in a quake
Tsunamis
Tsunamis are a much bigger threat on the Washington coast than southern Puget Sound waters. That’s why the state has provided funds to create a network of 122 tsunami warning sirens in communities up and down the coast. Twenty are still being installed. The working sirens will go off around 10:21 a.m. Thursday.
There’s two kinds of tsunami threats on the coast, Friederich said. One is the kind that soon follows a major quake just off the coast. A siren wouldn’t be needed to warn of that event. When the shaking stops, head to higher ground immediately, experts say.
But the other kind, the one the sirens would be most useful for, is a tsunami generated hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away. In those situations, coastal residents might not feel the quake but the resulting tsunami that arrives sometimes hours later could have devastating effects.
An emergency kit might have to double as a “go bag” for coast residents who would need to evacuate low lying areas.
Another crucial piece of emergency gear is a NOAA weather alert radio. The programmable radios are enabled to alert residents of an incoming tsunami, they also do double duty as major weather alert radios.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Past ShakeOut participants have used the power of social media to spread preparedness, Friederich said, using #ShakeOut .
“They’ll take ShakeOut selfies and they’ll post them on Instagram and Twitter and it becomes kind of a social moment where people start talking about earthquakes,” he said.
The Washington Emergency Management Division will answer earthquake-related questions on their Facebook page at noon Thursday.
ShakeOut selfies with pets are also popular, Friederich said.
This story was originally published October 21, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Drop, cover and hold on. The Great Shakeout is today."
