NEW entrants at Douglas Park School in Masterton ran through their "drop, cover and hold" paces during the national ShakeOut earthquake drill yesterday morning.
Deputy principal Jane Macdonald said about 40 pupils and a handful of teaching staff quickly and without fuss ducked beneath desks or covered up in the new entrants class at 9.15am yesterday, completing the same drill undertaken at the same time by about 1.4 million other Kiwis at schools and businesses across New Zealand.
Mrs Macdonald said the class had held a dry run of the drill earlier in the week in the wake of the 5.8-magnitude tremor that was centred in Pongaroa in northern Wairarapa overnight Monday.
"Sometimes with the new entrants, they get a little upset during fire drills and evacuations and some cry, but they all did what theyshould have today without a hitch."
Sarah Stuart-Black, Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management director, said the aim of the exercise was to get people "to take the opportunity to think about what they and their family need to do to prepare for a shake".
