18 October 2013 (20:40 UTC-07 Tango 17 October 2013)/13 Dhu’l-Hijja 1434/26 Mehr 1391/14 Ren-Xu (9th month) 4711
The Gem State of Idaho held its largest earthquake drill ever. Did you hear about it? I live in the Gem State and it was news to me.
It’s called The Great Idaho ShakeOut. It took place at 10:17 hours on 17 October 2013. Coincidentally a 3.6 quake hit northern Utah, along the same fault line that runs through eastern Idaho on up to the supervolcano Yellowstone, at 10:19 hours!
It is true that most quakes in Idaho take place in the eastern part of the state. But suddenly, almost out-o-the blue it’s a major concern of the government?
If you go to The Great Idaho ShakeOut website it looks like the “annual” drill is being pushed by state agencies, but the actual instigators are the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. They have drills for Idaho already planned for 2014 and 2015. The website claims it was school officials who chose to hold the drill in the morning on a school day.
Local TV news reports showed kindergarteners being led out of school with their wrists tied to ropes!!! The ShakeOut website stated that at 10:17 hours they wanted everybody in Idaho to stop what they were doing and “Drop, Cover, and Hold On [fetal position?]……and stay in this position for at least 60 seconds.“!
Reports claim between 70-thousand and 92-thousand Idahoans took part in the drill. Small print on the website also says “You can hold your drill at any time within 2 weeks of October 17.” Does this imply that if you conduct a quake drill outside that time period you could be arrested?
Turns out the Great ShakeOut drills are conducted all across the U.S. and even in other countries. That’s right, FEMA and other federal agencies are conducting quake drills in Japan, Italy, New Zealand, Canada and “other countries”. Your tax dollars at work.
At about 15:30 hours power was lost to a large area. Idaho Power reported the outage affected the western half of the city of Chubbuck, west to the American Falls reservoir 23 miles away. The cause was unknown.
Power came back on for me at 17:30 hours, but at 17:51 hours Idaho Power reported that power was still out in parts of Chubbuck, and they were sending crews back out to find out why. Cause of outage still unknown.
By 20:00 hours Idaho Power reported “no outages”. No explanation for the outage, and so far nothing mentioned by local news media. Mmmm, on the same day as the FEMA sponsored earthquake drill.