A major earthquake hasn’t struck any of California’s biggest cities in more than three decades, but experts and officials say the so-called “Big One” is a matter of when, not if.

And the risk is far from isolated, even in a state this large.

“It shouldn’t come as a surprise that 70% of Californians live within 30 miles of an active fault,” California State Geologist Jeremy Lancaster said during a recent webinar. “We have seven active volcanoes; we have landslides; we have tsunamis; we have thousands of miles of active faults.”

But what should you do when the earth eventually starts to rumble? That’s where Thursday’s annual ShakeOut earthquake drill comes in.

Southern California will anchor its ShakeOut drill at the Los Angeles Emergency Operations Center in downtown; the San Francisco

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