Schools Hold Curtailed Quake Drills : Preparedness: Statewide practice sessions are scaled back in San Fernando Valley and other regions hit hard by temblor to keep from traumatizing students.

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

Although it was regarded as a necessary precaution, some said the exercise would be 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 remind students that it was practice. Plans for more elaborate drills that included having students and staff pretend to be injured, dead and missing were dropped at most schools.

Nonetheless, some elementary students were frightened by the exercise.

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

The Van Gogh students, who attend 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.”

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 news 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.

At El Camino Real High in Woodland Hills, which closed for about six weeks, administrators held 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 source 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 text and library books and causing soaked ceiling tiles to fall.

Assistant Principal Cedric King said that the 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 Jr. 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.”

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