Ready, Set, Shake: California puts on quake drill

LOS ANGELES — Californians dropped to the ground, covered their heads and held onto the furniture Thursday for a mock "Big One" — an earthquake drill billed as the largest in U.S. history and aimed at testing everyone from state leaders to students who donned fake blood to play victim.

At exactly 10 a.m., television news programs announced there was an earthquake disaster drill, then cut to cameras in school classrooms showing children ducking under their desks and holding onto them. After about a minute, the drill moved into aftermath mode, with people portraying quake victims.

The exercise was based on a hypothetical magnitude-7.8 temblor that ruptures the southern San Andreas Fault — an event that scientists call the feared "Big One." Such a quake would cause 1,800 deaths and $200 billion in damage, researchers estimate.

Local governments, emergency responders, schools, hospitals, churches, businesses and residents were taking part. Organizers said some 5 million people had signed up to participate.

"We're trying to make it a communal event," U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones, who helped create the crisis scenario, said before the event.

The minimum participation calls for people to dive for safety. Firefighters and other emergency responders are staging full-scale exercises complete with search-and-rescue missions and medical triaging of people posing as casualty victims.

Shortly before the fake quake struck, students at Bishop Alemany High School in the Mission Hills area lined up to receive makeup that would turn them into simulated quake victims.

The San Fernando Valley school is not far from the epicenter of the 1994 Northridge quake that killed 72 people.

Fire Department workers applied fake blood, makeup and wax to create gruesome injuries.

Patricia Esguerra, 17, sported purple cheeks and a simulated gash on her forehead.

"It feels nasty but it's for a good cause so I don't mind," said Esguerra, who lived through the 1994 quake but remembers little about it.

The quake drill made her consider the effects of a real temblor.

"If this is what it's going to look like, it's pretty bad," she said, peering around at the fake casualties. "I'm a little scared."