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7.8 Earthquake Simulation Hits Los Angeles
"Evacuate ALL building and proceed to the circle," read an emergency text alert sent to students at Mount St. Mary's College in Brentwood. "Right now-train just stopped," a tweet from Metro commuter shawnrstewart wrote about the massive quake.
Luckily, this was not the real thing. "The 'Golden Gaurdian' earthquake drill has begun," the Los Angeles Fire Department said in an alert message. "This would be a notification that a Major Earthquake has occurred in the Southern California area. The exercise simulates a 7.8 earthquake."
That magnitude is 50 times greater than the Northridge earthquake in 1994 which is one of the reasons why today is The Great Southern California ShakeOut, a scripted disaster which is billed as the largest earthquake drill in US hisotry. Right now, after an estimated 5 million dropped, covered and held, emergency responders are still playing out the situation whether that be response, search and rescue and triage. KTLA and Fox 11 News covered the event and mock press conferences like it was really going on. Officials are estimating that 1,800 are dead and 53,000 are injured. A big aftershock at 10:28 a.m. was then simulated at the press conference. Reporters and scientists all dropped to the floor.
The big one is not a matter of if, it's when. Do you feel a little better now? For millions, everything is okay."Survived earthquake drill," chrisspurgeon on Twitter wrote.
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