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City employee Teresa Hansen gets under her desk as part of the 2023 Great Utah ShakeOut earthquake drill at the Adams Public Safety Building in Lehi on Thursday, April 20, 2023.

Harrison Epstein, Daily Herald

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Vineyard City staff participate in an emergency preparedness meeting on Thursday, April 20, 2023. The meeting was held in conjunction with the Great Utah ShakeOut earthquake drill.

Courtesy Vineyard City

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At 10 a.m. Thursday, almost 900,000 Utahns gathered under their desks and tables to brace for impact. No earthquakes were reported, but the Great Utah ShakeOut’s top priority is for organizations and individuals to be prepared for a real emergency.

“Even though it’s officially only one day a year, we definitely try to send that information out as much as possible or as much as people ask for it. If it’s during flood season like now and we’re doing an earthquake drill, so be it,” said Scott Dabell, Lehi emergency management coordinator. “Disasters never happen on a timely schedule.”

In Utah County, over 220,000 people registered to participate in the 2023 Great Utah ShakeOut with about 200,000 registering as child care providers and preschools, K-12 schools and districts, and colleges and universities. Others participated through local governments, businesses, nonprofit organizations, as individuals and more.

“We want to protect our children,” said Wade Mathews, public information officer for the Utah Division of Emergency Management. The division administers the Great Utah ShakeOut alongside the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the University of Southern California.

The Great Utah ShakeOut has been an annual occurrence since 2012 and in the decade-plus since has grown significantly and seen changes in procedure.

“One of the things that changed was the protective action itself,” Mathews said. “We used to say, ‘Stand in a doorway.’ We don’t say that anymore. I think that came about around the same time ShakeOut started.”

Standing in a doorway, he explained, leaves people vulnerable to falling debris and potential collapse from doorways. Now, people are told to drop to the ground, seek cover (typically under a desk or table) and hold on until shaking is completed. While awareness of “Drop, Cover, and Hold On” is still growing among adults, Mathews said the saying has stuck with children and young people as they’ve participated in the drills.

School-aged children are of high priority with earthquake drills for a multitude of reasons including the odds they are spending their days in buildings with unreinforced masonry. Though the percentage of students in seismically unsound schools with unsecured masonry has dropped significantly in the last decade, many such buildings still remain in use.

According to a report published in February 2022, there are 119 Utah schools that would likely be unsafe in the event of an earthquake.

The Utah County buildings on the list include: Alpine Elementary (Alpine School District), American Fork High (ASD), Lehi Elementary (ASD), Lindon Elementary (ASD), Pleasant Grove High (ASD), Sharon Elementary (ASD), Windsor Elementary (ASD), Springville Junior High (Nebo School District), Brockbank Elementary (Nebo), Payson High (Nebo), Sage Creek Elementary (Nebo), Spanish Fork High (Nebo), Springville High (Nebo), Wilson Elementary (Nebo) and Wasatch Elementary (Provo City School District).

While replacing the schools is the best case scenario, Mathews said, reinforcing older buildings would still provide extra security. The school report was issued in the aftermath of March 18, 2020, when a magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck Magna, on Salt Lake City’s west side.

The earthquake, and 20 subsequent aftershocks, were felt across the Wasatch Front and even into parts of Idaho and Wyoming. It was the strongest earthquake to hit Utah since the 1992 St. George quake, which was measured at 5.8.

According to the Utah Seismic Safety Commission and U.S. Geological Survey, “there is a 57% probability that the Wasatch Front region will experience at least one Magnitude (M) 6.0 or greater earthquake” within the next 50 years. The Wasatch Front region includes Utah, Salt Lake, Summit, Tooele and Wasatch counties.

As opposed to flooding, the most time-sensitive potential emergency in northern and central Utah, earthquake preparation is done on large and small scales. For the Great Utah ShakeOut, Lehi officials tested connection between the city’s ham radio system and Utah County government.

The emergency management division works to keep communication systems running smoothly and residents informed of what should be done in the event of a natural disaster. Cities use Community Emergency Response Teams to stay in touch with residents and transmit necessary and potentially life-saving information.

“We try to make it so that everybody — our residents as well as the city employees — are on the same page,” Dabell said. “There’s always things you can do more of. Lehi’s a growing city so we have lots of new residents. We have lots of new employees that are joining our ranks so it’s a constant trying to keep the information going.”

Single- and multi-state shakeouts are held across the United States along with Canada, New Zealand, Japan and other countries. While Utah was unable to meet its goal of 1 million participants in the ShakeOut on Thursday, individuals and organizations can register and complete the training on their own time.

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