A Shaky Drill : ‘ We had to keep telling them this was <i> earthquake </i> practice, practice, practice. ‘ Fannie Humphery, Principal at Martin Luther King Elementary School : Safety: Valley schools participate but scale back on a statewide earthquake exercise. Some students are still frightened.

With many memories still fresh of the devastating 6.8-magnitude Northridge earthquake, hundreds of thousands of students dropped under their desks Tuesday morning and covered their heads in a statewide earthquake drill.

Though regarded as a necessary precaution, the exercise was seen by some as too frightening for many children.

Consequently, the drill, held to kick off the state Earthquake Preparedness Month, was scaled back significantly in parts of Southern California, such as the San Fernando Valley where the Jan. 17 quake hit hardest. About 1.5 million students, teachers and administrators participated in Tuesday’s event.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, where 76 schools suffered severe earthquake damage, most principals said they told teachers to talk about the drill and to remind students that it was a practice. Plans for elaborate drills that included having students and staff pretend to be injured, dead and missing were scrapped at most schools.

Nonetheless, some elementary students still were frightened by the exercise.

“My teacher said, ‘Drop,’ and it scared me,” said Jill Slevin, a 9-year-old third-grader who attends Van Gogh Street Elementary School in Granada Hills. “All of a sudden, we had to get under our desks.”

The Van Gogh students, who are attending school at a nearby campus because the Van Gogh site remains closed due to earthquake damage, left their portable classrooms and sat in groups on the grass.

“These kids have been so traumatized,” said Barbara Ramsey, a school psychologist at Van Gogh. “They’re out of their school and some are out of their homes.”

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Richard Andrews, director of the state office of emergency services, said the drills are necessary to prepare students and staff in the event an earthquake hits during school hours.

“Obviously in the aftermath of the Jan. 17 quake, it has special meaning,” Andrews said at a press conference at Danube Avenue Elementary in Granada Hills, which suffered $1 million in quake damage.

Van Gogh Principal Maureen Diekmann, who said she did not want to put students and teachers through an extensive drill, said she also believes the students need to be prepared for another quake. “We just felt it was better to go through the drill so they know the process but not to elaborate on it.”

The Los Angeles school district plans to re-evaluate its emergency plans, including its communications systems between schools and offices. The drill was intended to prepare students and staff at local schools but also to help officials upgrade districtwide plans.

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At El Camino Real High in Woodland Hills, which was closed for about six weeks and where classroom walls shook loose, administrators chose to hold a more extensive drill. Students pretended to be missing and others pretended to be injured.

“It was taken very seriously,” said Joyce Washington, the principal at El Camino. “I think the youngsters know the consequences because they have lived through it.”

The drop drill--typically the brunt of jokes among some teen-agers--took on a serious tone at Audubon Middle School in the Crenshaw District as most youths said the vision of fallen debris and ceiling tiles in their classrooms was still fresh on their minds.

“This time I made sure my head was covered and I held onto the leg of my desk,” said Akillah Dunn, 14. “I got away from glass. I don’t want anything to fall on my head.”

Audubon was among the hardest-hit campuses outside of the San Fernando Valley, suffering severe water damage when ceiling pipes burst, flooding two stories of classrooms, destroying thousands of textbooks and library books and causing soaked ceiling tiles to fall to the floor.

Assistant Principal Cedric King boasted that the entire 1,700-member student body evacuated to the playing field in a record eight minutes. “No problems with stragglers. No problems with kids running around,” he said as he carried a thick file of rosters, evacuation plans and a walkie-talkie.

At nearby Martin Luther King Elementary School, Principal Fannie Humphery said she had to take extra care to explain that the drill was neither a real earthquake nor a “code blue” alarm, in which students run for safety because of crime activity.

“When there are police helicopters overhead we clear the playground,” Humphery said. “There have been incidents where suspects run through campus. We had to keep telling them this was earthquake practice, practice, practice.”

At Sulphur Springs Elementary School in Canyon Country, which has been emphasizing earthquake preparedness for more than a decade, students had intended to present Mayor George Pederson with a book of their experiences during the January quake and to sing a song about earthquake preparation. The mayor was a no-show.

Pederson said later he “forgot” about the drill, but went to the school later and the students re-enacted the drill for him.

Jan Low, who showed up to watch her daughter Tracey, 6, practice the drill, said her daughter’s enthusiasm for being prepared prompted her to put together a quake preparedness kit for her own home.

“She made me feel pretty guilty,” Low said. “She came home and told me we needed to be prepared and asked me whether I had an earthquake kit.”

Low said her daughter has displayed little fear of earthquakes and attributed her confidence to the skills she has learned at school. “She’s not scared anymore,” Low said. “She told me she feels safer here (at school) than at home.”

Times staff writers Stephanie Chavez and Julie Tamaki and correspondent Susan Byrnes contributed to this story.