Major US Earthquake Drill
Friday, February 10, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
On the 200th anniversary of the 1812 New Madrid earthquakes, over two million people participated in the Second Great Central United States ShakeOut earthquake drill. More than 525,000 Indiana residents, the largest number in any of the nine states that participated, took part in the drill. The event, organized by the Central Earthquake Consortium, involved the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee.
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Four days after the drill in the central United States, a similar earthquake drill took place in Delhi, India. Over 40,000 people took part, and the drill was the culmination of India's first-ever State-wide earthquake preparedness exercise which started in in December 2011. Margareta Wahlström, the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, "encourages all high risk seismic cities to follow the example of Delhi," noting that "more than 370 million people live in earthquake prone cities around the world."