An untested and untrained plan is little more than theory. After developing school/college emergency plans a training program should be designed to educate students, parents, teachers, staff, crisis team members and administrators in threat assessment procedures, emergency response, management policies and procedures. Once training is implemented, exercises should be conducted to test the plans and training.

Currently, most educational facilities have adopted a training philosophy that embraces performing extremely well under reasonable conditions, rather than performing reasonably well under extreme conditions. For example:

Lockdown, Weather, Earthquake & Fire Drills Deficiencies
Staff has advanced knowledge of the exact time of the drill and the drill occurs when all students are in the classroom.

Solution
After two or three successful drills, limit advanced knowledge to the day of the event and implement the drills during transition times. Note: Avoid conducting drills during meal periods, due to the costs associates with missed lunches. To test response, set up a mock lunch period with students and staff.

Once you have your drills up and running, it is time to conduct training exercises. Tabletop & functional exercises use vivid scenarios, guided by experienced and certified facilitators, to engage participants in discussions of how they would respond to hypothetical events. Tabletops are designed to be a non-threatening and relatively low cost approach to validating capabilities. Use Homeland Security Exercise Evaluation Program (HSEEP) based exercises to explore and validate plans, identify logical or structural conflicts or gaps in those plans and develop specific areas for further study and improvement. Scenario should be coordinated/developed with local emergency management and public safety.

Stay safe

Brad

This post is provided by SafePlans (www.safeplans.com), an all-hazards preparedness solution including emergency plans, staff training, and detailed site mapping.

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©2008 SafePlans, LLC

Recently reports of the bird/avian flu have resurfaced. This particular virus has experts worldwide concerned that it could mutate and lead to a pandemic. Planning for a Pandemic event requires strategies unlike any other disaster. This is primarily due to the facts that should a pandemic occur we will 1) see it coming, 2) be unable to stop it, 3) be forced to deal with exposure concerns for over one year and 4) will take several years to recover.

Overview
What Is an Influenza Pandemic?
A pandemic is defined as a global disease outbreak. An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus emerges for which there is little or no immunity in the human population, begins to cause serious illness and then spreads easily person-to-person worldwide.
Historically, the 20th century saw 3 pandemics of influenza:
• 1918 influenza pandemic caused at least 500,000 U.S. deaths and up to 40 million deaths worldwide
• 1957 influenza pandemic caused at least 70,000 U.S. deaths and 1-2 million deaths worldwide
• 1968 influenza pandemic caused about 34,000 U.S. deaths and 700,000 deaths worldwide

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