October 27, 2017 • Seaside Signal • seasidesignal.com • 9A
Drop, cover and hold on
Seaside schools
prepare with
earthquake drill
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As everyone at Seaside
High School waited for the
Great Oregon ShakeOut drill
to begin, biology teacher Su-
zanna Kruger went over some
earthquake preparedness ba-
sics.
“When you feel shaking
and you drop, you also need
to?” Kruger asked, leaving
her zoology students to fill in
the rest.
“Cover the back of your
head,” the students said in
unison.
“And when you are under
the table, what do you need to
do?” Kruger asked again.
“Hold on to it,” the class
said back. “In case the table
moves.”
At 10:19 a.m. Thursday,
Oct. 19, Kruger and her stu-
dents dived under and clutched
on as the warning announce-
ment came over the loudspeak-
er. Seaside School District is
one of 580,000 organizations
registered for the 2017 Great
Oregon ShakeOut, a world-
wide event that encourages par-
ticipants to practice earthquake
preparedness techniques.
This is the second year
schools in Seaside — vulner-
able to the Cascadia Subduc-
tion Zone — have performed
the drill. Like last year, the
drill was also supposed to be
paired with a tsunami evacua-
tion route walk, but was can-
celed due to safety concerns
associated with rainy weather
and high wind warnings.
“As one of the four schools
in Oregon within the inunda-
tion zone, it is critical to be
prepared. Failing to prepare is
preparing for failure,” Seaside
High School Principal Jeff
Roberts said. “While we hope
there’s not an event like this,
we want to know students can
respond appropriately.”
One of the main concerns
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Students take shelter under a table at Seaside High School during an earthquake drill.
‘All we can do is educate and prepare
our kids to know how to respond.’
Seaside High School Principal Jeff Roberts
in Seaside is whether certain
roads and bridges that lead
people to higher ground will
be intact in the event of a
major earthquake and tsuna-
mi. But from Roberts’ point
of view, the school district is
doing all that it can to be pre-
pared.
“We can’t change infra-
structure issues. We can’t re-
build bridges. All we can do is
educate and prepare our kids
to know how to respond,” he
said. “The best thing we can
do is move the kids out of
danger to the new school site,
which doesn’t change how we
prepare, but is overall a better
plan.”
For Kruger, knowing a
new school campus out of the
inundation zone is on its way
is a major source of relief as
a teacher.
“We are prepared, but no
matter what we do it is go-
ing to be chaotic getting that
many kids to safety,” she said.
Kruger has taught for Sea-
side School District since
2003. She said a day hasn’t
passed where she hasn’t con-
sidered how a seismic event
would affect her and her two
daughters.
When she goes to bed, she
takes mental notes of where
she leaves her glasses and
her shoes in case she needs to
evacuate in the middle of the
night. She thinks about how
she would connect with her
daughters if a disaster hap-
pened while they were sepa-
rated.
“Thinking about these
things is half the reason I
run — to prepare,” she said,
laughing.
When Kruger is teaching
her students how to prepare
for a seismic event, she thinks
of her own children and what
she would want them to know.
“All of these kids are
someone else’s beloved
child,” Kruger said. “I just
hope to communicate what
they need to know to be safe.”
The drill itself was rel-
atively lighthearted in the
classroom. Students giggled
to fill the silence as they had
to scrunch together under
their small tables.
But Kruger said her stu-
dents know what is at stake.
“There was a lot of dis-
cussion about disasters when
the school was trying to pass
a bond for the new campus,”
Kruger said. “Some students
came out of that as a little
fatalistic — if it’s going to
happen, it’s going to happen.
But there’s another strand,
like the ASB (Associated Stu-
dent Body) students who re-
ally energized the effort to do
this drill. A lot of them were
thinking of their younger sib-
lings at school in the inunda-
tion zone. They were thinking
about keeping them safe.”
bstewart@dailyastorian.com
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