It’s Earthquake Preparedness Month. Here’s what schools should actually have in place.

April is Earthquake Preparedness Month, which means a lot of schools will run a Drop, Cover, and Hold On drill sometime in the next few weeks. That’s fine. It’s necessary. But if the drill is the entire plan, the school isn’t prepared — it’s just practiced one part of the response.

Real earthquake readiness for a school goes well beyond what happens in the first 15 seconds. It includes what the building systems do automatically, how the school communicates with parents, how long students may need to shelter on campus, and whether anyone has actually thought through the scenarios that make earthquakes in schools particularly complicated.

The gap between drills and readiness

Schools are good at drills. California’s education code requires earthquake drills at least quarterly, and most schools comply. Students know the routine. Teachers know the routine. Administrators have binders.

But drills only cover personal protective action. They don’t address the operational side: what happens to the PA system if power goes out, how the school communicates with hundreds of parents who are all calling at once, whether anyone has checked that ceiling-mounted projectors and unsecured bookshelves aren’t going to become projectiles, or how the school handles reunification when every parent in the district shows up at the same time.

CalOES published an updated guide and checklist for nonstructural earthquake hazards in schools in 2025. It’s worth reading if you’re responsible for a campus. Most of the highest-risk items aren’t structural. They’re the things bolted (or not bolted) to walls, shelves, and ceilings.

What seconds of warning can actually do for a school

Earthquake early warning does something specific for schools: it provides time for protective action before shaking starts, rather than during it.

ShakeAlert, the USGS earthquake early warning system, can deliver alerts seconds to tens of seconds before strong shaking arrives, depending on the distance from the epicenter. For a school, those seconds can mean the difference between students getting under desks before anything falls and students reacting after the room is already shaking.

That matters more than it sounds like on paper. Research published in Seismological Research Letters (Strauss & Allen, 2016) estimated that earthquake early warning could reduce injuries by roughly 50% in scenarios where people receive and act on a warning before shaking starts. Schools are where this matters most. You have rooms full of kids surrounded by furniture and equipment, and the protective action (Drop, Cover, Hold On) works much better when you start it before things are already falling.

Automated systems can go further. EEW-connected systems can trigger PA announcements, unlock doors, cut gas lines, and send parent notifications automatically when an alert is received. No one has to find a phone, call the front office, or make a decision under stress. The system acts, and humans follow.

What a prepared school looks like in 2026

A school that’s actually ready for an earthquake — not just drill-compliant — has a few things working together.

Start with the drills, but include teachers, staff, and administrators, not just students. The adults are the ones who have to make decisions when the shaking stops.

Then look at communication. If the phone system goes down, how do you reach parents? If the website crashes, where do families go for updates? Schools that have worked through this ahead of time handle the post-earthquake chaos much better than those figuring it out in real time.

Walk through classrooms and common areas. Look up. Anything that could fall, slide, or topple needs to be secured. This is probably the best return on effort any school can get for earthquake safety.

Consider earthquake early warning. ShakeAlert is already operational in California, Oregon, and Washington, and systems like EWL’s QuakeAlert can be deployed to campuses and tied into existing notification infrastructure. Building-wide alerts and automated responses (PA announcements, door unlocks, gas shutoffs) mean the system acts before anyone has to make a call.

Finally, practice reunification. When parents flood the campus after a felt earthquake, you need a process for releasing students safely and tracking who’s been picked up. This gets chaotic fast if it hasn’t been rehearsed.

The opportunity in April

Earthquake Preparedness Month is a useful hook, not because the seismic risk is higher in April, but because it puts the topic on the agenda. If you’re a school administrator, safety coordinator, or district facilities manager, this is a good month to do more than the required drill.

Walk your campus for non-structural hazards. Test your communication plan. Ask whether your school would actually be ready if a 6.0 hit at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday. If the answer is “probably not,” that’s normal, and it’s fixable.

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