2015 Great Utah ShakeOut drill encourages individual, community preparedness


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SALT LAKE CITY — At 10:15 a.m. Thursday, Utahns all across the state — from elementary children to state officials — took cover and held on.

The ground remained still, as it has for centuries, but more than 920,000 Utah residents still dropped under desks, chairs and all things sturdy, and waited for the fictitious earthquake to subside.

Businesses, schools, hospitals, military personnel, neighborhoods, government agencies and others all took part in the annual statewide drill, the Great Utah ShakeOut, because of what slumbers beneath their feet.

The “sleeping giant,” a 7.0-magnitude earthquake, would be the worst natural disaster that could happen in Utah if it were to strike the Salt Lake City segment of the Wasatch fault, said Joe Dougherty, spokesman for the Utah Division of Emergency Management. A quake of that scale would have cataclysmic impacts on the state’s life, infrastructure and economy.

“We’re absolutely due for a major, devastating earthquake,” Dougherty said.

Geologic records show the fault has a major earthquake every 350 to 400 years, he said. But the region’s last was roughly 350 years ago. And, troubling still, scientists simply don’t have the capability to accurately predict from rock records when or where the next quake will occur.

“We don’t know when it will happen,” Dougherty said. “It could happen tomorrow, or it could happen in 50 years, and that’s why it’s just so important that we have a culture of preparedness in the state of Utah.”

The Great Utah ShakeOut’s twofold goal is to help people and organizations learn instinctual responses on how to protect themselves in the event of the rare yet plausible disaster — drop, cover and hold on. But the ShakeOut’s message does not end there.

“The Great Utah ShakeOut is the basic level of emergency preparedness,” Dougherty said. “But people really benefit when they go through their own emergency plans and procedures. Do they have plans for keeping their loved ones safe? Do businesses have a plan for evacuating and sheltering their employees? How is everyone going to stay alive together?”

Bob Carey, operations chief for the Utah Division of Emergency Management, said federal loss-estimation software predicts a 7.0 quake in Salt Lake County would sever the region’s main arteries — power, water, highways, even communication — for weeks and, in some areas, even months.

Even worse, nearly 2,500 would die and more than 36,000 would be injured. First responders would be overwhelmed, and emergency managers will be scrambling to divvy resources, so individual preparedness will dictate how quickly the state fully recovers, which Carey said would take decades.

The burden of preparedness, he said, falls on everyone’s shoulders — from individuals, to businesses, to local governments.

“There’s got to be a level of responsibility on all sides to be able to deal with this,” Carey said.

Government duties

The Emergency Operations Center, a secure bunker beneath the state Capitol, buzzed Thursday afternoon in wake of the 10:15 a.m. drill: The state’s emergency managers’ tasks had just begun.

The center would become the nerve center for state agencies and first responders in the event of a major quake. The center consists of a task force of 16 emergency support functions: transportation, communication, public works, firefighting, emergency management, mass care, resource support, health and medical, search and rescue, hazardous materials, food and water, energy, law enforcement and security, long-term recovery, public information, and military support.

Kris Hamlet, Utah Division of Emergency Management director, said the center practices twice a year, with experts from the state’s major agencies — from the Utah Department of Transportation to the National Guard — so its operations will function smoothly in a disaster. Each year, one of the simulations suitably falls on the ShakeOut, he said.

“It’s so important that we have drills like this because we don’t have a lot of big emergencies in Utah,” Hamlet said. “In fact, we’re one of the safest states in the country when you look at big disasters. So this brings us one step closer to being prepared when we do have to deal with it.”

Carey said each agency must be well-versed in how it will communicate, execute orders and ultimately bring its “resources to the fight,” even when resources are spread thin. The Emergency Operations Center will report to the Federal Emergency Management Agency when city, county and state resources are exhausted, he said.

State mitigation efforts

While the center’s duty is to react to the disaster, other state efforts are in place to mitigate the damage before it happens.


We need to think about what kind of steps we are willing to take so that not only are we ready to respond to an earthquake, but so we're also more resilient so the earthquake impacts us less. But are we willing to make those tradeoffs of cost?

–Ari Bruening, Envision Utah chief operating officer


Envision Utah worked with 400 experts to compile disaster resilience scenarios to look beyond short-term needs and consider how to ensure such a catastrophe does not permanently disrupt Utah’s economy and way of life.

The scenarios are used to help Utahns understand the state’s weaknesses when it comes to earthquake damage mitigation so they can use that knowledge to provide feedback on the “Your Utah, Your Future" survey, said Ari Bruening, Envision Utah chief operating officer.

“The ShakeOut is a great exercise we do every year to call attention to these risks and make sure that we’re ready, but this survey adds one more layer to that,” Bruening said. “We need to think about what kind of steps we are willing to take so that not only are we ready to respond to an earthquake, but so we’re also more resilient so the earthquake impacts us less. But are we willing to make those tradeoffs of cost?”

Envision Utah’s disaster resilience report outlines two major improvements that would help mitigate most loss of life and structural damage: retrofitting structurally weak buildings and strengthening building codes.

According to the report, Utah has 165,000 unreinforced brick buildings, which would cause 55 percent of deaths in an earthquake. Dougherty said Salt Lake County houses almost 50,000 of those buildings. The report also states that by 2050, the number of buildings in Utah will double. If new buildings are built to the current code, many of them will be uninhabitable after an earthquake.

Lisa Sun, Envision Utah disaster resilience co-chairwoman and a BYU professor, said retrofitting more state buildings and enhancing building codes to be more earthquake-ready would be expensive. According to the report, retrofitting a home would cost $5,000 to $10,000 each, and enhancing building codes would increase the cost of new buildings by about 1.5 percent.

“So we need people to think about how much they care about these issues,” Sun said. “Are they willing to raise the cost of a home, or are those tradeoffs that people aren’t willing to make? We need to have Utahns decide if these investments are important to them, because only with that support is it likely that the Legislature will take action.”

“The idea of the (survey) is that the public gets to choose which direction we go,” Bruening said. “The public voice will determine the final vision, and that vision will be used by the governor, the Legislature, local governments and so on, and will drive the agenda for years to come.”

Business and individual preparedness

After the “earthquake” settled, about 200 newsroom employees filed out of the KSL Broadcast House, which was one business that participated in the Great Utah ShakeOut. American Red Cross workers met them outside of the building with a wealth of preparedness information. Several won free 72-hour kits.

Darrell Brown, president of Bonneville International Corp., said the company takes earthquake practice and preparedness seriously because KSL is federally charged to provide safety information to the public in disaster events.

“It’s our obligation to the community, and unless our employees are safe, we can’t do our jobs,” he said. “We can’t get the latest news and information out to the community so they know what to do to keep themselves safe, so this is critical.”

Brown said it’s an element of “business continuity” and a social responsiblity of businesses to provide safety and evacuation plans for the employees so the aftermath of a disaster isn’t as devastating.

Rebecca Jones, Utah American Red Cross individual and community preparedness manager, said the Great Utah ShakeOut drill is a “great start,” but the Red Cross encourages individuals, neighborhoods and businesses to be motivated to do as much as possible to prepare, from having first aid kits to evacuation plans.

“You’re never finished preparing,” she said. “There’s always more you can do.”

Individual and family preparedness information is available at the Be Ready Utah website, as well as the American Red Cross’ website and mobile apps.

Contributing: Keith McCord

Katie McKellar is a Dixie State University graduate with a bachelor of science in mass communication. Before interning at Deseret News, she reported and edited news content for Dixie Sun News, first as Photo Editor, then as Features Editor. Email: kmckellar@deseretnews.com

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