China Earthquake Places Spotlight On School Safety
You have probably heard of the earthquake in China by now. Despite the fact that I have not watched the news on TV, reading the news online has imprinted images of destruction in my mind. The screams of children, the feel of panic in the air, and the all around chaos are not easy to keep out of my mind.
Though, of course, I feel for everyone who was affected by the quake, one particular aspect of this disaster has caught my attention – the children who were in school on the fateful day. According to various reports, thousands of children have died due to the earthquake that struck Sichuan Monday of this week. The CS Monitor reports:
In the wake of Monday’s 7.9-magnitude earthquake in China’s southwestern province of Sichuan, some international experts are questioning the adequacy of the region’s building codes and construction practices.
Juyuan Middle School, about 60 miles from the epicenter, was one of several schools that collapsed Monday. So far rescuers have recovered more than 60 bodies from the school, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
But there was little word on the rest of the nearly 900 teenagers who were believed to be trapped under their collapsed school building.
Some students managed to escape, while at least one was pulled out of the wreckage alive Tuesday morning. At least 1,000 students and teachers were killed or missing after another school collapsed in Mianyang city, about 100 miles northeast of the epicenter, Xinhua reported.
Other schools closer to the epicenter also toppled, although specifics were not available because the area was generally inaccessible.
This might have happened in a country on the other side of the world but who is to say that this disaster cannot befall North American cities? With the state of affairs all over the world at present, natural disasters are occurring left and right, with no guarantees that anyone is safe.
If an earthquake were to hit one of our towns or cities, how safe would our children be in their schools? Perhaps school buildings in Canada and the United States follow stricter measures when it comes to their safety in case of a seismological disaster. To be honest, though, I haven’t really heard much about this point, except maybe in parts of the country which are more prone to earthquakes.
Perhaps this is a good time to take another look at how safe our school buildings are – not only with regard to quakes but other natural occurrences as well.
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Posted on May 14th, 2008 by Deborah J Thomas
Filed under: Building safety, News, School Safety Issues
You bring up a good point about the condition of school buildings across North America. While schools obviously need to maintain their buildings to meet code standards, schools also should conduct safety and security audits to assess areas of risk on a regular basis, so that they can repair any problem areas. Without a safe learning environment, it’s difficult for schools to educate their students effectively.
Bret Rachlin
http://www.wrensolutions.com/EducationBlog/tabid/532/Default.aspx
Natural disasters can be a scary thing to face, and when schools and children are ill-prepared to face these disasters these situations increase in hazard for our loved ones. There are some great training resources currently available to keep bus drivers and school administrators up to speed on the latest safety topics – and ultimately, to keep students safe. SafePupilTransport.com, for example, is a new Web-based training program for both full-time and extracurricular school bus drivers. The program combines online videos with written presentations and follow-up testing to provide convenient, accessible driver training. SafePupilTransport training topics range from emergency evacuation to distracted driving to railroad crossing, and the program also offers commercial driver’s license training and recruiting. More information can be found online at http://www.SafePupilTransport.com. With this training our children will be prepared in the case of emergencies like these with a set protocol to follow in order to help maintain their safety.