Patch Blog: Think Your Day is a Disaster? Ours is Worse!

What is Hermon Shake-Out: The Play?

It's a communty-wide earthquake drill and evacuation exercise, and it's the first one is Los Angeles to integrate residents, responders and out of state contacts.

It will be followed by an outdoor emergency preparedness festival with puppet shows, music, discounted emergency supplies by S.O.S. Survival Products, and lots of fun!

When and Where is the Shake-Out?

The Shake-Out will begin on Saturday, October 22 from 8:30-12:30 p.m.
in the Fresco Community Market Parking Lot at 5914 Monterey Road.

Why should I participate in the Shake-Out?

We truly hope you will participate in the Northeast LA Disaster Survival Task Force’s free earthquake drill and evacuation exercise. No experience necessary, just a willingness to learn about emergency preparedness, help your community survive through a catastrophe, and maybe laugh while you’re here (bring a disaster joke).

This "play" will not only be fun and educational, but the things you will learn will help you survive the next disaster. Residents and visitors alike will get a chance to Drop, Cover & Hold, call into the Command Post with their FRS radios, and evacuate from their residences due to an approaching wildfire.

Focusing primarily on the residents, visitors, and Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) members, the drill involves a a simulated 7.8 mag earthquake and subsequent fire in Debs Park slowly approaching the neighborhood of Hermon, forcing residents to activate their Community Emergency Plan (CEP) after 911 services become temporarily unavailable.

What is the Purpose of the Shake-Out?

The goals of the drill are three-fold.

Goals of Community-Wide Drill

1) Verify the Hermon Community Emergency Plan recently generated and soon available at www.LAsurvival.org.

2) Give residents and visitors a unique opportunity to practice their own family emergency response plans, pick up cheap emergency supplies and watch CERT conduct search & rescue operations while saving several “injured” persons

3) Provide a realistic training opportunity for residents and responders. Residents & Visitors will be asked to Drop, Cover & Hold, test backup communications protocols, play victims for the CERT medical teams and evacuate to the Neighborhood Survival Area.

This is where participants will receive free reward packets for completing their tasks, including registering their status online at “Safe and Well”. Prizes also awarded to the persons with the best disaster jokes.

I have some more questions about the Shake-Out; where can I ask them?

Questions about the Shake-Out can be addressed to Northeast LA Disaster Survival Task Force. As chairman, I can be reached at chair@LAsurvival.org or by phone at 323.895.6275