Evacuation
A school evacuation typically occurs when staff and students need to leave the building either for a drill, or because of a true crisis situation. In a practice drill an outside evacuation may last only a few minutes. A true emergency can last longer and/or require moving to another location for a longer period of time. You should consider:
- Transportation
- Site maps of exits
- Assigned evacuation roles
- Backup buildings
Reverse evacuation
A critical drill and process for two reasons. First, as a complement to the evacuation drill—once out, you need to get everyone back in! Second, if the students are in a scheduled outside activity (recess), this allows you to get staff and students back into the building quickly in the event of an external threat, such as a violent person, storm, biohazard release, etc.
Emergency lockdown drills
This drill is often used when there is concern involving an intruder. An announcement that the campus is going on an immediate lockdown will trigger the event. Those in the building can remain where they are (see shelter-in-place) at the time of the announcement as long as these areas (classroom, gym, etc.) can be secured. In true emergencies, however, it may be best, depending on your own circumstances, to have everyone locate to a pre-ordained meeting area deemed to be easily and effectively secured.
Shelter-in-place for hazardous materials events
Similar to the above, this is used when it is determined that it is safer to keep students in the building than to evacuate. Examples would include external intruder, tornado, earthquake, biohazard, etc.
Two common examples of shelter-in-place drills include:
- Fire drills. These should include blocked-access practice and emphasize close supervision and accounting for students. In the OLA fire, teachers under stress failed to supervise the students when they got to their evacuation points and a number of students went back into the school to look for friends and siblings.
- Severe weather and earthquake protocols. Schools in “tornado alley,” the Gulf Coast, or on the West Coast will typically prepare for these events. Special note is made here for those schools NOT in areas typically thought to present this type of risk, and, therefore, may have no protocols and do not practice drills. Check with local EMA (Emergency Medical Assistance) personnel to see if there is ANY chance of these events occurring; if so, develop protocols and practice them.
Being practiced in these drills and following the established protocols is critical. So is the staff’s ability to “think on its toes” without panicking, should the need arise to keep students, faculty, and staff safe. To this point, Mike Dorn, school safety expert and Executive Director of Safe Havens International, also offers the following:
a. Testing staff judgment—blocked-access drills and drills initiated by a staff member who is prompted by an administrator. Without these, staff often panic under stress and the school misses an opportunity to prevent or mitigate the crisis.
b. Use of double rows and power walk for all drills where students are moved (reverse evacuation, fire drills, tornado, etc.). Using an assessment tool and video analysis of more than 300 actual drills, one of our clients found that these concepts reduce evacuation time by an average of 30%. This reduces the chances of loss of life and instructional time.
c. Once staff has practiced drills for each of the above, we suggest the careful use of combination drills—i.e. fire drill with a reverse evacuation to return students and staff to the school (but not for every drill as you will condition them to return to the school under stress). This usually shaves off even more time from the drill while gaining even more lost instructional time. After time, you can add shelter-in-place, tornado or lockdown after the reverse evacuation return. Most of our clients can complete all three drills faster than the typical school can complete a traditional fire drill.
It is also critical that all school staff complete at least the most basic free online course in the National Incident Management System on the FEMA web site.
When these drills turn to true emergencies, training and the ability to access these procedures quickly and easily becomes critical. Therefore, be certain that these drills are fully and clearly articulated in your “flip chart” or emergency preparedness manual. Remember to include local EMS and EMA resources as you develop or review your drill protocols. Consider asking EMS or EMA personnel to participate in one or more of these drills!
