Students stood around Cerritos College’s campus waiting for silence to signal the end of the annual “Great Shakeout” on Oct. 17 at 10:17 a.m.

“The Great Shakeout” is a worldwide event that happens every year to ensure that people know how to react if an earthquake were to occur.

Liberal arts major Daisy Quirart thought the event was a good thing for the students to participate in and said, “I think it’s a good idea because in case of an earthquake happening, we know what to do.”

Arts major Jose Munoz echoes Quirart’s thoughts but felt that the event was drawn out for too long. 

According to the United States Geological Survey’s, California has the second most amount of earthquakes in the United States since 1974.

Although there was not a triage demonstration this year, Victoria Soekamto and other nurse practitioners were out there as if they were waiting for the injured to come out of the buildings.

“We were the providers so we would be assessing the victims as they come, triaging them and seeing which ones we can help and prioritize them to see who gets helped first,“ Soekamto said.

Campus police was also involved with the shakeout, patrolling the campus, clearing the buildings and making sure that the students knew where to go until it was time to go back inside.

Cadet 7-5 Celeste Cisneros had control over the students in front of the Burnight Theatre and discussed how campus police planned for the event.

“We get together and they inform us like a week before, ‘We are going to have this big pretend earthquake drill,’ and then they keep giving us information in regard to the whole week,” Cisneros explained. “Today, before the actual drill, we all met up and were informed on all of our duties and what we had to do.”

Cisneros went on to talk about the importance of everyone being on the same page if something like the “big one” were to hit.

“It’s good skill for prevention,” Cisneros said.”We never know when the big one is going to hit. We always hear it’s going to hit sometime, so I think this is good practice for everyone in general.”

While some students thought the event was a good thing, many of the students could be seen waiting around, playing on their phones or taking a nap.

Quirart shared her thoughts on why some students may not have taken it so seriously and said, “I feel like they think it won’t happen because they always try to think positive, but any day it can happen and they should take it seriously.”

Munoz and a couple of friends remained calm, pulled out their card game and said, “We are just playing around waiting for the event to pass and having a bit of fun.”