SHAKE, RATTLE... AND SURVIVE

Residents find out what an 8.0-magnitude quake feels like during a two-day Disaster Preparedness Academy.

By JASON KOTOWSKI, Californian staff writer, from "The Bakersfield Californian" front page headline, September 6, 2007

The ground shifts slightly when the machine is first turned on. Within a few seconds, plastic plates and cups are flying around as the room tilts wildly and the people inside grasp handles to avoid being thrown from their seats.
     The Quake Cottage, which simulates an 8.0-magnitude earthquake, isn't for the faint of hart. Demonstrations of the machine were being held in front of the Holiday Inn Select on Wednesday as part of a two-day Disaster Preparedness Academy.
     Harlan Giles, originally from Oklahoma, said he'll take a tornado over an earthquake any day. He said he would stand outside back home and watch tornadoes go by, but he's not sure how he'd deal with an earthquake.
     "I guess I'd try to find a safe place in the house, if there was one," said Giles, who was at the conference on behalf of Occidental of Elk Hills.
     The conference is designed to help local businesses, organizations, schools, hospitals and the community at large learn how to prepare for and recover from a major disaster. Proceeds from the conference which ends at 4 p.m. today, will benefit the Kern County Chapter of the American Red Cross.
     Golden Empire Transit employee Jose Garcia described the Quake Cottage experience as intense, especially wit items falling all over the place. He said he's been through a few earthquakes, but nothing that extreme.
     "It would be very hard to move anywhere," Garcia said of being in a house when an actual 8.0 earthquake was happening.
     Chuck LeFever, director of safety and operations for a San Diego-based disaster preparedness company called Safe-T-Proof, said the cottage gives people a realistic dose of what an actual massive earthquake feels like. Besides taking the cottage to various events, the company also fastens down objects and provides cabinet locks for organizations, hospitals and homes.
     This is the vourth, and most powerful, incarnation of the cottage. Those who experienced it Wednesday want no part of the real thing.
     "I really don't know how I'd get through it," Giles said.