Hot Cars, Drills And Spills, And Upstaging Quakes

Busy Wednesday in the 24/680 as stolen and otherwise wanted cars zip to and fro, police officers tiptoe through the neighbor’s rose bushes, some school drills go awry and an actual quake clears its throat a day ahead of a planned, statewide earthquake drill.

As if we’re not all edgy enough – our phones are going off like submarine dive klaxons and driving our heartbeats through the roof (according to our Apple Watch).

Needless to say our Flash Alert wires have been red-hot as a potentially tense scenario winds down in Pleasant Hill, a Walnut Creek ADW (cop talk for assault with a deadly weapon) case somehow lumped people and police in Lafayette into the mix before burning through the Caldecott – apparently after an Orinda man followed his allegedly stolen truck through the tunnel and on into Oakland in an unrelated incident.

We know folks love their stories to arrive tied in neat, tidy little bows with all the details lined up and in place but police are still working out who exactly did what to whom and why and people, apparently, aren’t always as forthcoming as they are with Matlock and Perry Mason.

So we’re chasing trails of broken automotive glass and fingers of people pointing and saying: “They went thataway” and hoping things come together later in the day.

While all that’s getting sorted out, wise folks who believe it is good to prepare for bad things are holding drills for the day things go wrong – with apparently mixed results.

Two local schools held drills based on a theoretical bomb threat to their campuses to ensure evacuation procedures were in place – but apparently opting not to let key people know that it was just a drill. Things got a little too real when police began contacting the schools with questions about the non-existent bomb and an actual ambulance had to be summoned when an actual student fell and suffered an actual injury.

Planning is good and drills have their place in planning for bad things – but Ma Nature apparently decided to upstage tomorrow’s planned “Great California Shakeout” drill by sending us a 4.1 Magnitude shaker of her own at 9:29 a.m., felt by folks in Isleton and giving a little added impetus to those already planning on checking their emergency kits.

What’s next? We’ll just have to wait and see…