 Thank you all for being here at Charles R. Drew University School of Medicine and Science. My name is Dr. Delia Santana and I am the acting dean for the nursing school here at Charles Drew University. We're happy to have you here. Today we're here because we would like to demonstrate what our students, faculty and staff do in the event of an emergency. We will have them evacuate and go to the flagpole and demonstrate that we are ready for an emergency when it happens. And so we're happy to have you here from the city, state and federal level and the media here on our campus in the Compton Watts area. CDU's commitment to the health of the community also does include earthquake preparedness. Internally, this means participating today in the Great California Shakeout as an opportunity to practice emergency responses to earthquakes and other emergencies. It means utilizing our resources for simulations, drills, training to prepare future health professionals who will be in these communities when such a crisis occurs. Externally, our commitment means providing our campus to the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services to hold or host this event. Today we serve as a vehicle for getting the simple message out to our communities to be ready, to have a plan, to have their earthquake kits and supplies to drop, cover and hold on. Our university started right here in the Willebrook area over 55 years ago in the aftermath of the Watts uprising in response to the lack of health care resources in South LA. And so our participation today speaks to the CDU mission as a student-centered university committed to preparing diverse health professional leaders dedicated to social justice and health equity for underserved populations. And we remain committed to that goal and look forward to leveraging the teaching and learning opportunity this Shakeout represents today. So our students, we have medical students, we have nursing students, radiology technicians and physician assistants, they're participating several mass casualty simulations today and we'll watch students drop, cover and hold on followed by the evacuation. We would like to remind the community to be prepared for the next earthquake. Make your emergency preparedness kits and be ready. Again, thank you to you, our friends and partners of the California Office of Emergency Services for this opportunity to train and share our commitment to earthquake preparedness for our CDU community and to those around us. Thank you very much. Well good morning. My name is Tina Curry and I'm Chief Deputy Director at the Governor's Office of Emergency Services. First, I want to thank and recognize Dr. Santana and Charles Drew University for hosting this event for the community and for the public here today. We are truly grateful for your partnership. Here in California, we faced a lot. We have wildfires that are increasingly destructive, we are entering another year of drought. Of course, the ongoing global pandemic, the list goes on. These events all have cascading impacts that exacerbate challenges that communities are already facing and difficulties that people and families already have and today we're here to talk about earthquake preparedness. As we've seen before, a large magnitude earthquake here in California has and will cause a lot of damage, disrupt key systems and services and have lasting impacts for many Californians. Though we don't know when an earthquake will strike, we have learned a lot about them. So each day brings an opportunity to know more and to do more to be prepared and that's why we're here today and why ShakeOut is so important. It's more than a reminder that earthquakes can happen anytime but that we are empowered to be ready for them and to take steps to keep ourselves and keep our families safe. I don't have to remind those of you here in Los Angeles about earthquake risk. Just a month ago, you had a shake in about 4.3 magnitude near Carson. It was felt all throughout the Los Angeles region. Today we continue our annual tradition to practice, drop, cover and hold on. Drop, cover and hold on is a simple set of steps, something we should all practice so that it's etched in our memory and our reaction is automatic when the ground shakes. The Great ShakeOut was an idea back in 2008 that was actually born right here in Southern California. This has grown to be a regular event each October, not just for the millions of Californians that participate but all across the nation and now the world. And today we ask all of you at 10.21 a.m. to practice drop, cover and hold on wherever you are at school, at work or at home. We're also excited to highlight another tool in our toolbox for earthquake preparedness. We now have the ability to detect earthquakes in advance of the earthquake shaking, providing precious seconds to take that protective action. Today I encourage all Californians with a smartphone to go to the App Store, go to the Google Play Store and download the My Shake app. The app is free and it's available in both English and in Spanish. You can also visit earthquake.ca.gov to learn more about earthquake warnings and earthquake preparedness. Earthquakes.ca.gov. The My Shake app takes that early detection signal, something you may have heard of, is called a shake alert and it passes it through the cell phone and notifies anyone within the area that may feel strong shaking. In fact, over 25,000 people right here in Los Angeles received a My Shake alert following or at the time of that Carson Quake that I mentioned before. So far over 1.5 million subscribers have already downloaded My Shake and today on Shake Out Day we want millions more to do the same. Please take this important step and join them by downloading this free service. Emergency and earthquake preparedness is something all of us as Californians have a part of and it's possible through important partnerships by many. Today I'm joined by some of those whose tireless effort and dedication keep us prepared and keep us safe. Charles Drew University, Los Angeles County, the California Geologic Survey, Assemblyman Rodriguez in the list goes on. And today the most important partner in earthquake preparedness is all of you. Take action today to be safe, to be informed, and to be prepared. Thank you. And next I'd like to introduce the Director of Emergency Management for the County of Los Angeles, Kevin McGowan. Good morning. Thank you, Tina, for the introduction. My name is Kevin McGowan. I'm the Director for Los Angeles County's Office of Emergency Management. On behalf of the county, I'd like to express our thanks to Team Charles Drew University and also to Cal OES for this wonderful event. Responding to and recovering from disasters, major earthquakes being one of them in Los Angeles County always takes our whole community. We've seen this whole community come to action on so many different occasions throughout the COVID-19 response and many of the other emergencies that we've been facing over the last couple years. A major earthquake will be no different and it's going to require an all hands on deck from our entire community to help navigate that issue. A few items. I'm a big believer in like arming our community to be able to respond to and recover from these types of disasters and really empower everyone to be effective. So a couple of things we can do at the community-based level is go to readylacounty.gov. That's readylacounty.gov and access all the information you're going to need to be prepared and be more resilient. A couple of these items include having a disaster preparedness plan for you, your family, friends and loved ones. Also institutions such as Charles Drew University, nonprofit organizations. We have a whole litany of information available for businesses and how all of us can come together and be a little bit more prepared. A couple of other important things. Communication is going to be heavily impacted when a major disaster like an earthquake occurs in the greater Los Angeles County region. And so I really implore everyone to think about what life without a cell phone would be like in the 21st century. We have the ease of communication now and it gets a lot of things done quickly. Those types of things might not be available for us. So relying on known community partners is going to be a really critical way to not only get life-saving support but also critical information for us to be able to navigate through those early days and weeks after a major disaster. And so I will ask our community to do one thing before I hand it over to our partners at the California Geological Survey. And it's to think about earthquakes not just today during the shakeout even though it's a great event, but to think about this often because in Southern California and especially Los Angeles County we're surrounded by risk and a major disaster is always just a day away from us. So it's very important for us to really embody the principles of today, not just on one day a year but throughout our days every day. So with that I would like to hand it over to Brian. Good morning. My name is Brian Olson and I'm an engineering geologist with the California Geological Survey in the Southern California Regional Office based in Los Angeles. The California Geological Survey and the Department of Conservation are proud to partner with Cal OES to help prepare communities for future earthquakes in California. The CGS is committed to the science of hazard mitigation with respect to earthquakes and to community preparedness through the shakeout exercise. Our earthquake programs range from identifying hazards to helping improve community resilience to contributing to the earthquake early warning system. And I would like to thank again Cal OES and Drew University for including us today. Do we have any questions from reporters? Can you just take us through the full scope and reach of the Great California Shakeout because from what I understand 26 million people are involved. It's an international thing. We're all connected. What happened in Japan created a tsunami here. Can you just talk about the international reach? Yes, thank you. Thank you for the question. You're absolutely correct. It is something that millions of Californians are participating in. A lot of our schools and, you know, communities throughout the state are doing this on the same time on the same day. But absolutely it has reached international levels all across the world. In some way there's a recognition of shakeout and the importance of, you know, Kevin's absolutely right. It's something preparedness should be on our minds every day. It is a reminder, you know, we're really just stopping and becoming aware and thinking about those simple steps. It does be earthquake repaired and it does resonate really with everyone. And is why I believe that something that took off here is something that has been replicated across the country. There's also been many, many earthquakes around the world. We hear about them every day. They're devastating. This threat knows no boundaries. And so, again, shakeout is a step that any person, any member of the public can take to keep themselves safe no matter where they are. So we're really, really pleased to see that it's a shared commitment across the world. And one more question, if no one else has one, is Dr. Santana, can you talk about what it would be like if you expected mass casualty event? What happens, you know, the event transpires and then what do you expect to happen from there? And how do you prepare? So thank you for that great question. And I just would like to remind everyone that first we need to be prepared at home. Right here, where we are right now, in the event that an earthquake happens, we need to be sure that our families are safe so we can be personally here and present to help those in danger here on campus. So what would happen is in the event of an emergency on campus, we would definitely do the drop cover and hold. And knowing that our structures are prepared, secured and all of that. So we try to mitigate as much as possible any casualties within our class settings. We do have students in classrooms all the time. So what we would do is after the shaking stops, we would have our evacuation as we have our evacuation routes posted. And the students, faculty and staff would leave based on their evacuation routes. They would come around, for example, from that building, the Alisarani building, walk on the sidewalk area, the concrete area avoiding the grassy area because of the electrical light and wires. And then they would walk around this area and proceed to the light poles there. And then after we have accountability, we would look for our casualties. As you will see on campus as we take a walk through. So thank you for that question. Since we still have a few more minutes before 10.21 and we continue on with the exercise, I'll try and continue like a dialogue conversation. For Tina Curry with Cal OES, I know you touched on the My Shake app. Can you go a little more detail into that, why it's important, and why even a few seconds matter if you have that on your phone? Absolutely. And my Shake app is but one way of what we hope are many ways that earthquake warnings can be delivered. It starts with a sensor network. It's all over California. Partners such as a USGS, Caltech down here in Southern California. UC Berkeley up in Northern California have been working on improving and making this technology a reality to detect earthquake shaking. So there's a wave that emerges from an earthquake before the shaking actually starts and the technology harnesses that information, if you will, and that energy and is able to communicate that. It has to happen at lightning speed, as you would imagine, which is really what all the refinement has been going into the system to make it possible to deliver to all of you. So that signal transfers into the cell phone. It is maybe just a few seconds, but if you think about it, when we actually do the drill in a few minutes, if you had five seconds of notice to stop and think about, you get a warning, drop cover and hold on, it is a long time, a lot more than we ever had to take that action to protect yourself. So even a few seconds is really powerful and can make a big difference in your safety. And we hope that the technology gets better and improves and gets faster over time so that we even have more warning and think about all that we can do to automate technology, stop trains, stop elevators, manufacturing lines, all these things that not only can protect people and save lives, but also kind of start to minimize some of that disruption that we have come to expect with earthquakes. The My Shake and the Shake Alert technology is also in the wireless emergency alert system. So something that you're used to for weather events for other types of warning. It is also transmitting that earthquake alert through that system. Google has made it a feature in all of the Android phones and many other local-based applications are also developing to use this technology we want. Everyone to have access to these warnings have them easy to be accessed and see more and more of this technology kind of embedded into our infrastructure so that, again, we have one more tool that we didn't have before to be earthquake safe. I hope that helps, Brian. Thank you, still a couple of minutes before we hit the drill. Kevin, you touched on what your residents in LA County can do to prepare themselves. Can you go more in detail? You kind of described, we may not have cell phones if there's an earthquake. You need to know where you're going to meet your family if you're not all together and just that planning and coordination and how important that is on a family level. Yeah, so at the family level, there's a couple of key things that we try to communicate over and over for that redundancy factor. Having a kit. So earthquakes don't always happen when you're at home. So having a preparedness kit with you, where you work, when you drive is always important. That way you have access to different resources that you might initially need. A couple of the key ones are always like the food and water but pharmaceuticals, if you're on prescription medicine, you might want to keep extra prescription medicine with you at your workplace or in your vehicle so that you'll have access to those types of things. Communication is always an interesting one. We rely so heavily on our cell phones but the radio system is a really resilient, a really resilient piece of infrastructure. So having those go-to radio frequent or radio in your car at home having a national weather service radio, those are different items that are beneficial not just for earthquake but for a variety of the different disasters we face. And then I think the most important thing people can really put a lot of time and energy into that brings value is having that family preparedness plan. So if your children are at school and you're at work and a disaster happens, how are you going to meet up with your children? How are you gonna ensure that they're safe and what network do you have in place so that when you don't have access to your cell phone you still have that information. So going back to the way we used to keep phone numbers and in a notebook, something that doesn't need battery power is always a key one. But really working that issue specifically to your family because these are very individual and family issues. And so making sure you have those solutions in place before the emergency happens is always a benefit. Less than a minute or so away, a reminder that our students sitting at the tables will practice drop cover and hold on as we now await for the alarms on the 1021 Shake Out Alert. And then afterwards Dr. Santana, you can kind of describe what we're seeing as your students begin to exercise and evacuate buildings. So if we can have the students drop cover and hold on at this time. So currently we have our students demonstrating the drop cover and hold on in response to the shaking, simulated shaking exercise. And they will hold this position until the shaking stops. After which we expect the evacuation exercise to occur. So we think the shaking has stopped. So if everyone would start evacuating and moving to the flag poles, avoiding the grassy area as that is considered a danger zone due to dropped wires and other hazards around. We're expecting that folks will avoid any fallen objects on the grounds. To my left, we see students evacuating from the LSR&E building and they're correctly following the evacuation route and they will continue to move around the Cobb building behind me. Dr. Santana, can you talk again why it's so important for you to practice this drill every year? So because, thank you for that question. Because we know that we are very susceptible to earthquakes and other emergencies. It is imperative that we do practice this drill on an annual basis. We do practice this drill on October 21st every year so that our students are prepared in the event of an earthquake or when an earthquake occurs. We can quickly practice the drop cover and hold on and then we can quickly evacuate so that we want to avoid any casualties and keep as much as possible our campus safe and also observe for any individuals who need our help during this process. So we will be continuing this practice as we move forward in partnership with our local departments and also California, Cal OES. So thank you. We're demonstrating, what we're demonstrating here is the mass evacuation and also some responses to an emergency or earthquake so that you will have individuals who are hurt and out of control. And this is important because knowing that this will happen is a way of our students getting prepared and being able to respond to these kinds of situations. So we are having a very realistic exercise where we wouldn't have to know how to respond to individuals who are having different kinds of reactions to this event. As a reminder to those of you who are watching online, we are experiencing an earthquake drill here at Charles Drew University. The reaction behind us is their students practicing not only what they would do to evacuate the building but then the medical response teaching their students how to respond to mass casualties. This is an exercise, a drill that is happening here on the Charles Drew campus in Los Angeles and also a reminder to go to My Shake to download the free app, the Shake Alert app and remember to have that plan. Thank you all for participating in the Great ShakeOut 2021. This concludes our broadcast. Thank you.