East Valley : Students Drilled in Quake Preparedness

As a jarring bell pierced through the halls at Byrd Middle School in Sun Valley on Tuesday morning, the 21 eighth- and ninth-graders in Penelope McMillan’s English as a second language class scrambled under desks and covered their heads to prepare for an impending 7.1-magnitude earthquake.

But little shook in the classroom, except for the few desks that students rattled to simulate the shaking of a massive temblor. The role-playing was part of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s earthquake preparedness drill.

The annual drill, being conducted this week at schools throughout the district, is designed to allow schools to evaluate their emergency plans in case an earthquake does strike the area. Six other schools held drills, including Noble Avenue Elementary School in North Hills.

Unlike the nervous reaction many students had during a 1994 statewide earthquake drill just months after the 6.8-magnitude Northridge quake shook the Valley, few students were unnerved during Tuesday’s exercise, teachers and administrators said.

At Noble, groups of older students sat next to younger ones to help answer questions or guide them through the procedures.

At Byrd, some students pretended to cry for their mothers and others whistled the sounds of fire engine sirens.

“I’m pretty calm today because we pretty much know what to do,” said ninth-grader Rafael Ramirez, 15, as he stood among his classmates on an open grassy area.

During the drill at Byrd, students marched in about 18 separate clusters across the schoolyard and onto the grass to await instructions from Assistant Principal Stanton Faris. Most students joked and played while Faris explained over a giant sound system the procedure for a real quake.

The emergency drills lasted between 30 minutes and one hour at the schools. They were cut short because of rain.