Long Beach City College participated in the Shakeout Drill at 10:18 a.m. text messages were sent alerting the 24,403 students enrolled that the drill was taking place instructing students and faculty to take cover on Thursday.
When facing a catastrophe, there are ways to alert students and staffs about an impending danger or a drill that is about to take place.
In reality, a text message is not enough to tell students what must be done during these emergencies.
Not everyone has a phone on them or even if they do have one the battery could be dead, and during a catastrophe phone lines are extremely busy.
Students should be thinking about emergency procedures during an event like an earthquake because it is critical to know what to do in the event of a natural disaster.
There are certain buildings that are not alerted about this earthquake drill according to John Thompson who works in the financial department in the administration building, it is believed the structure of the building will withstand the force that will strike. Yet, there are chances that the school cannot take.
No matter how strong the infrastructure of LBCC buildings are assumed to be, there is still the possibility of it failing.
There should be a schoolwide intercom announcement for both LAC and PCC instructing all employees to halt all instruction for the duration of the drill. Once instruction is paused, the drill will commence and students should take cover under a table or desk until it is clear to evacuate the building. Employees should always remind and notify the students where the emergency exits are at as well.
In order to further prepare students for an earthquake, these drills must be frequent in both LBCC campuses and must be done as if it is the real thing.
Students who are injured on campus during the earthquake are to be evacuated from any possible place that involves a roof or any debris that can fall and cause further injury. Next, they must exit their buildings with their professor in an orderly fashion and find the nearest school police officer to get further instruction on where to evacuate.
The best spot to evacuate students injured or not is the Veterans Stadium according to LBCC’s Point Of Information Officer Stacy Toda.
With the open space emergency vehicles are able to enter the school and treat those who were hurt during a earthquake.
This would also lead the students away from any debris and many of them can be treated. Students are to remain here at all times until school officials receives the ‘OK’ for students to completely evacuate the school.
All of LBCC must abide to the drill with employees collectively taking charge of the students. A drill like this must be systematically done and not taken lightly.
All buildings should be involved with evacuation procedures so that everyone would know what to do and not panic during an actual earthquake.
When we do this as a schoolwide effort, we are able to work together to help others that may be injured and get ourselves to safety in a calm manner.