A. Knowing Your Role
1: The Director or the Principal develops a disaster plan and coordinates it with municipal emergency management officials to make sure that it is compatible with the municipality's Emergency Operations Plan.
2: Each staff member needs to be trained on his/her role and responsibilities.
3: Having practice drills is critical, this will ensure that everyone knows their roll, this brings me a real live disaster that happened at my son's school.
4: It is also important that parents know the diaster plan that is being followed.
The State in which I live is not really known for hurricane's or tornado's, but over the past 5 years we have been hit by tornado's. In 2009 we had a serious thunderstorm that put us under a tornado watch. When the alarm went off, it was during school hours, because I work in an elementary school, my principal had a diaister plan in place the first week of school, and we practice everyday with our students. I have an emergency pack hanging next to the door, in this packet I have a first aid kit, the students emergency contact information and a student roster. I also made 3 signs in neon colors, one says "all here", another says "all are not here, but I know where they are", and the last one says "all are not here____are absent". I include emergency contact information in my emergency pack because I call each parent to inform them of the situation and give them the option of picking up there child. Most parents are just thankful that there is a plan in place and that they were informed of what's going on.
At the time this occured, my son was a junior in high school. I know that the principal had a plan in place because I requested a copy of it so I will know what they were doing and where the students were going in the event that there was a weather emergency.
The school that my son attended was a magnet school, so they had over 2000 students, which is a diaister itself. Around 1:30 pm my son called me saying that their building was being evacuated to their safe house because of the warning, he had no idea where his class was because he was in the restroom when the siren went off. I asked if they had done a practice drill to the safe house, and he said "no", I asked if he knew where the safe house was, he again replied "no". This put me in panic mood because my son is special needs. I told him to stay where he was until I called him back. I proceeded to call his case load manager to inform her of what was going on and his where abouts, this put her in panic mood because she was on the other side of the building and his class was already on their way to the safe house. She contacted his teacher to inform her that she was missing a student, which she would have known if she had did a head count. The teacher was instructed to give her students to another Special Education teacher and go back to the restroom by her class and retreive my son. I called him back to inform him that his teacher was on the way.
Could this situation have been prevented? Of course it could have. Why did this accident occur? This incident occured because polocies and procedures were not followed. There was a disiter plan already in place, my son's teacher did not go over this plan with the students, nor did she familiarize herself with the plan. The principal did not follow through to make sure her staff understtod the plan and she did not follow through to make sure they were implemnting the plan, because of this my son's life was put in danger. It is so important that all staff be trained and prepared for any disiater that occur at your daycare or public school. Being unprepared and untrained can put the children and yourself in danger.
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