Disaster preparedness

Hurricanes Katrina and Andrew, the Northridge Earthquake and the Red River flooding of 1997 damaged many schools, making buildings uninhabitable and disrupting the lives of students.

School officials must make a special effort to plan for disasters, mitigate the risks and protect the safety of students and educators.
Every school’s disaster plan should have four main areas of focus, according to Campussafetymagazine.com:* prevention and mitigation: puts in place measures to prevent accidents, fires and criminal acts and situations that cannot be prevented, such as hurricanes
* preparedness: guides the action of staff during a crisis or disaster; including efforts such as stockpiling disaster supplies, training employees and coordinating a drill program for local hazards
* response: formal written plan that logs critical functions from the emergency operations plan and documents who carried out crucial steps during the event
* recovery: the first component outlines death notification, the crisis recovery method that will be used and the organization’s involvement in memorials; the second component is the business continuity plan, which spells out how the operations of the institution will be resumed.

Bus driver handles medical emergency

A school bus driver was hailed for helping save the life of a student with a blocked airway earlier this month, according to Schoolbusfleet.com.

Mary Miller, director of transportation at Marion, NY Central School District, said that while a district bus was moving along its morning route, a student alerted driver Jim Couperus that another student was struggling to breathe.

Couperus pulled over the bus and radioed the transportation department to request emergency medical help.

Miller’s staff was able to immediately alert Wayne County Advanced Life Support, which has a satellite office in the district’s transportation building. A responder was dispatched to the scene and found that the eighth grader’s airway was completely blocked.

Emergency care was administered, and the student was transported to a local hospital. It was determined that she had had a severe allergic reaction, but she fully recovered.

Miller praised Couperus for his role in saving the student’s life. She said that Couperus’ decisive actions showed that he had been trained well. “His reaction was just applaudable,” she said of Couperus, who has served as a driver at the district for about four years. “He stayed calm and did everything that would be expected of him.”