UPDATE, SEPT. 15, 7:23 A.M.: Um, you know those emergency exercises at UC Irvine I reported were happening Wednesday? Major brain fart: the drills are actually TODAY. Just apply the details from the original post on the next page to today, Thursday. But, here's the weird thing: when I thought Wednesday was Thursday, I pointed out UCI's mock emergency response was not related to the 4.1 magnitude earthquake that struck that morning and was felt in Irvine. Well, this morning–the REAL morning of the drills–another quake struck, and this one was centered only three miles south of town.
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The 3.5 magnitude earthquake struck at 2:56 a.m. today and was felt not only in Irvine but throughout Orange County and as far away as Montebello. No damage, injuries, yadda yadda yadda.
UPDATE, SEPT. 14, 9:41 A.M.: Just to be clearer, UCI does not
possess the power to create earthquakes to make its emergency drills
more realistic. (Yet.) That includes quakes like the magnitude 4.1
shaker that struck at 7:44 a.m. just outside Yucaipa (or, as we call it
in Berdoo, “Yucca Pie”). No reports of damage or injuries, but the quake
was felt by folks in Irvine and scores of other SoCal communities.
ORIGINAL POST, SEPT. 14, 9:31 A.M.: Just
to be clear, if you encounter cops and sirens and firetrucks and
ominousness and people running around like chickens with their heads cut
off at UC Irvine this THURSDAY morning, it is NOT fallout from the verdict being
read in the “Irvine 11” case.
Or, if there is a negative campus reaction to a decision involving the
Muslim students now on trial, that's separate from today's THURSDAY's chaos that
was manufactured to test UCI emergency response.
They do this annually at UCI. Exercises continuing throughout the day involve UCI police, uniformed Irvine city police, county firefighters and role-playing volunteers, according to UCI spokesman Tom Vasich. Response tactics will be practiced to four pre-scripted scenarios.
Morning activities take place at the Information & Computer Science building and Humanities Hall, while the afternoon drills surround the Gateway Study Center.
“So, if you hear word about police and fire units coming onto campus for an emergency, that's what will be going on,” Vasich informs.
Unless . . . uh . . . you know.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.