Never been in an earthquake but this was the first article (from 2015) I just saw about it and mentions some Kentucky school kids as well as other states getting out of school for this...I was 9 years old at the time. I actually thought I was a couple years older when it happened, but I do remember that some guy predicted an earthquake and they taught us at school what to do in case of an earthquake several times. I can't say with certainty but I'm like 99 percent sure we actually got a day or two off from school cause of this. I didn't read the whole article so I'm not sure why the prediction was taken so seriously, but looking back that seems crazy to me.
On Dec. 3, 1990, an earthquake was supposed to level the small town of New Madrid, Missouri and become one of the biggest natural disasters the country had ever experienced. The ensuing mayhem — and quiet — instead brought fleeting attention to a high-risk seismic zone in the heart of America...
www.buzzfeednews.com
From the article:
The third day of December 1990 was a Monday, but schools in the small southeast Missouri town of New Madrid were closed.
In fact, some 40,000 students in portions of Missouri and surrounding states — Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana — had the day off, and some districts had canceled Tuesday and Wednesday as well. The reasons given by school officials varied. Some said the cancellations were made out of an abundance of caution, or in response to community pressure. Others said that even if schools had remained open, many kids would have been absent anyway, because their parents wanted to keep them at home, or had decided to leave the area. The closings had been announced weeks, in some cases even months, beforehand.