Lincoln High School participates in Great ShakeOut

There was a statewide Great ShakeOut Earthquake drill Thursday morning.

All 22 schools in District 93 participated in the drill.

Each school was given a different real life scenario that could happen if an earthquake takes place.

Earthquake sound effects are what disrupted 180 Lincoln High School students while they were sitting in class at 10:16 a.m.

Students were instructed by Principal Gordon Howard on what to do in case of an earthquake.

After making the announcements, Howard went around the campus and told students how to get to their designated areas.

The idea was to help make students and faculty as comfortable as they are with fire drills.

“That they would know exactly what to do and it would just be a reaction and not, ‘Oh my heck, what’s going on here what do we need to do?’ and panic, so you don’t want to have any panic in an emergency, ” said Howard.

The school was given a scenario to act out.

The scenario was that there was a gas leak and all other exits but the fire escape were unsafe to use.

“Even if it’s a drill or not you want to follow the procedure to make sure that in the case of a real event you want to be prepared,” said senior Zach Davis.

Howard said overall he thinks the students and staff did a great job but he recognizes certain areas need improvement.

“Our radios that we carry that we communicate with district wide within the school, they are supposed to be on all of the time, and as we started the drill trying to communicate with my custodian and a couple others in the building that have those..wasn’t able to,” said Howard.

Howard also believes that drills like this allow the school to find what could go wrong and to make sure the issue won’t happen in an actual emergency.