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An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7 hit the Bay Area at 8 a.m. Thursday, as the Hayward Fault gave way north of San Leandro and the area suffered one of its largest disasters in decades. 

Or so the drill went. 

Thursday morning, areas of the UC Berkeley campus were swarmed with people taking part in Quake 2000, a disaster field training exercise. Starting at 9 a.m., over 400 campus employees took part in the event, simulating the procedures that would occur should a real earthquake of this magnitude hit Berkeley. 

People participating in the event included UC police officers, first aid volunteers, health and safety hazardous material response personnel, building assessment teams, and building coordinators. 

The drill was limited to the UC campus, but observers from outside organizations, such as the Alameda County Office of Emergency Services and the City of Berkeley, were present. “Every building coordinator on campus got in advance an envelope with a scenario,” campus spokesperson Marie Felde said. 

The 165 building coordinators then called emergency management areas to report the scenario of each building. Emergency management areas then called the emergency operations center. 

“At that point, the field drill began, and that’s where all of the rescues went on,” Felde said. 

UC police officer Sherief Ibrahim was one of the people stationed at an emergency area outside of Evans Baseball Field running incident command. He received calls from buildings around campus and sent search and rescue teams out to give aid to people or mannequins that were lost or trapped inside. 

“It is obvious that everybody is prepared to handle this kind of situation, and the purpose for the training is to discover what the flaws might be,” Ibrahim said. “I think we did a fine job evaluating the scenario and determining what works and what doesn’t work so we can improve on it for the next time.” 

Over the course of the morning, Ibrahim sent 18 groups out to do search and rescue procedures. At Quake 2000, there was one other emergency area, while in a real disaster there would be up to 15 emergency areas around campus. 

One of the search and rescue teams, made up of volunteer campus employees with some search and rescue training, was sent out to the Center for EUV Astrophysics on Kittredge Street. 

Upon arrival, the three engineers in the group assessed the building, making sure it was safe to enter. Once the building was cleared, the four others went into the building, in search of one person with a major injury and four others with minor injuries. 

Mike Wisherop, an employee for Environment Health and Safety, got through four scenarios with his health and safety hazardous material response group. They included calls about leaking oxygen bottles in one building and strong odors in other buildings. 

“They went a lot faster than they would have in a real situation,” Wisherop said. “But it was pretty realistic. There were several situations that I think really would actually occur in an earthquake.” 

This was the first time UC Berkeley had done an emergency drill to this extent, and most of those involved agreed it things went smoothly. In fact, it was the largest drill ever done at a university in the state of California. 

“We have done smaller drills of the emergency operation center (in the past) but we had not done a field drill before,” Felde said. 

“I think that they followed command protocol correctly and things are progressing as they would probably in a real life sit