Dozens of schools in Pennsylvania and Delaware will conduct an earthquake drill tomorrow at 10:17 am where students will drop to the ground and take cover under their desks.
More than 150, K-12 schools in Pennsylvania are participating, including ones in school districts in Abington, Levittown, Maple Glen, Perkasie and Warminster. Ten schools are taking part in Delaware in Bear, Camden, Dover, Middletown, Newark, Wilmington, Woodside and Wyoming. No K-12 schools in New Jersey are participating, according to Shakeout.org, which organizes The Great ShakeOut Drill across the country in conjunction with federal, state and local emergency-preparedness agencies.
This is the sixth year Northeast states have participated, which began in California, as you might expect. While earthquakes around here are relatively rare and mild, the Delaware Emergency Management Agency notes that the First State has had two earthquakes in 10 years.
"As recently as two years ago in November, 2017, a 4.1 earthquake was centered in the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge near Dover," it points out. "That followed a quake in August, 2011 that was centered in Virginia."
Pennsylvania residents also felt the Virginia earthquake, though the state's largest quake was in the northwestern part of the state in 1998 when a 5.2-magnitude rumbler caused minor damage, but disrupted groundwater supplies. In New Jersey, quakes have been rare and minor.
Of course Californians have seen some of the most devastating quakes in the country, including the one on Oct. 17, 1989 in San Francisco that caused more than 60 deaths and $6 billion in damage. They also had a 4.7 quake on Tuesday and another smaller one just this morning. So their kids might be paying closer attention than usual tomorrow.
