Prepare people to Drop, Cover, and Hold On—and prepare district operations to continue when buildings, roads, utilities, and telecommunications are unsafe.
During shaking: follow official earthquake guidance and the site plan. Drop, Cover, and Hold On; do not run outside during shaking. Afterward, expect aftershocks, hazards, and restricted building access. Call 911 for immediate life-safety emergencies.
Required school planning
California Education Code sections 35295–35297 establish an earthquake emergency procedure system, and section 32282 incorporates earthquake procedures into the Comprehensive School Safety Plan. CDE guidance states that drop-procedure practice is held quarterly in elementary schools and once each semester in secondary schools. Plans must account for pupils with disabilities and connect to the required instructional continuity plan.
Engineer out predictable failures
Facilities and equipment
Have qualified professionals evaluate structural and nonstructural hazards.
Use flexible connections where appropriate; secure gas cylinders and heavy equipment.
Keep exits, shutoffs, emergency lighting, and fire protection accessible and inspected.
Technology architecture
Remove single-site dependencies for identity, DNS, internet, telephony, SIS, payroll, and emergency messaging.
Maintain encrypted, immutable/offline, geographically separated backups and recovery documentation.
Contract for alternate circuits, equipment, workspace, and priority vendor support.
Monitor server-room power, temperature, humidity, water, access, and fire systems remotely.
From impact to operation
Phase
Data and operational actions
0–4 hours
Account for students and staff; activate ICS/SEMS; treat utilities and structures as unsafe; use out-of-band communications; begin an incident log.
4–24 hours
Confirm alternate leadership and facilities; assess provider and network status; preserve emergency rosters; notify families accessibly and in appropriate languages.
1–3 days
Establish trusted identity and communications; resume payroll, enrollment, attendance, special education, food, transportation, and records workflows using approved alternate processes.
3–30 days
Recover systems in priority order; reconcile manual transactions; assess buildings professionally; document costs, damage, decisions, and service interruptions.
Long term
Rebuild to current requirements, eliminate discovered single points of failure, support displaced students and staff, and close corrective actions from the after-action review.
Data-professional go-kit
Encrypted emergency contact and role roster with alternates; no unnecessary student data.
Printed and protected network/application dependency map, recovery priorities, and vendor escalation paths.
Offline recovery codes, key-custody procedure, clean administrative devices, power banks, radios, and hotspot options.
Forms for student/staff accounting, enrollment, attendance, medication, device checkout, damage, expenses, decisions, and manual transactions.
Current facility maps, utility shutoffs, rack/equipment inventory, insurance records, contracts, and mutual-aid agreements.
Exercise what failure really looks like
Run a functional exercise in which the district office and primary data center are inaccessible, internet and cellular service are intermittent, key staff are unavailable, and an aftershock interrupts recovery. Require teams to account for people, invoke alternate communications, restore a clean identity service, retrieve a protected backup, operate a manual enrollment/attendance workflow, and reconcile it afterward.
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