Absence of emergency evacuation facility which caused the death of seven schoolgirls in a stampede in Delhi, has raised a series of questions about the safety measures implemented by city schools.
Every school must focus on safety measures like providing an emergency evacuation facility and training students in fire drill exercises, which should be performed on a regular basis throughout the year. Providing for evacuation facility is an appropriate response to any fire emergencies and other situations like when a school receives a bomb threat.But unfortunately, not all government schools in the city provide this facility. “Installing fire extinguishers and training for all the teachers in government schools is underway. We will start implementing it soon,” said Manu Raval, chairman, municipal school board, Gujarat.
More often than not, teachers and staff are the first to respond to such emergency situations. Teachers in particular are viewed as role models by their students. In an emergency, students are most likely to follow the advice of their teachers and other adults. Yet, very few of these initial responders have any formal training in handling an emergency. “We were given short term training some time ago” said Jagannath Madhugundi, assistant teacher, Bapunagar school.
Parents have their own complaints regarding schools and their facilities. Shilpa Yagnik, a resident of Bopal said schools should train all their employees for emergency response. Instructions written in a concise manner, providing information on how to tackle such situations must be circulated among all the staff members. “In addition, management must review these procedures with employees during meetings. Armed with this information, teachers will be in a better position to teach students about how to tackle an emergency.”
Private schools appear to be leading in the race when it comes to safety of students and teachers. Ranjeeta Gill, principal, HBK Kapadia School, said, “We have kept the entry and exit point at the school separate. This is to avoid any sort of commotion. Moreover, our school premise is very spacious; we had even carried out large-scale disaster management drills after the Gujarat earthquake.”
The need to give instructions to deal with emergency situations and avert a crisis is very crucial and communicating accurate and sufficiently detailed information is a challenge. “Our emergency evacuation procedures are all in place. There are fire extinguishers everywhere and we have been carrying out drill sessions for students and teachers to give them an experience of how to handle an emergency situation. Our teachers have also been trained in this regard” said G Emmanual, principal, Seventh Day Adventist School.
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