“With the reunification software, we are able to ensure the safety of our students on campus and consult with our local police department… By using a reunification system that does the quick ID scan, it helps us to ensure we’re releasing students to the people we need to be releasing them to.”
“With the reunification software, we are able to ensure the safety of our students on campus and consult with our local police department… By using a reunification system that does the quick ID scan, it helps us to ensure we’re releasing students to the people we need to be releasing them to.”
Write a School Severe Weather Disaster Plan
Your disaster plan is part of your school emergency operations plan (EOP). It should outline the action your school will take to prepare for, respond to, and recover from weather-related incidents. When writing your disaster plan, you should collaborate with your county’s emergency management director and seek guidance from your state’s department of education and agencies like the National Weather Service (NWS) and the American Red Cross. Tailor your plan to your specific school and plan for the worst-case scenarios.
FEATURED RESOURCE
Webinar
Choose a Disaster Coordinator
Schools should designate a responsible staff member or group of individuals as the Disaster Coordinator(s). Your coordinator(s) attend local weather and disaster training and are responsible for creating your plan with the appropriate school staff, community organizations, and first responders.
Determine School Safety Zones
Evacuations can be necessary if your building is no longer safe and/or suffers damage such as loss of power, roof collapse, broken windows, or flooding. Schools should pick a primary evacuation site—and multiple backup options—that can safely house everyone on campus.
FEATURED RESOURCE
Depending on the type of disaster, expected impact on your campus, and the timing, it may be best to activate your plan in phases. For example, a thunderstorm may only require you to move students from dangerous areas, like your portable classrooms or the track field, into a physical building. However, if the storm strengthens and leads to a tornado warning or watch, you must be prepared to activate your full response plan and move everyone into their assigned safety zones.
TIP:
Just like your EOP, your disaster plan is only valuable if the procedures are routinely practiced. Drills familiarize your school and community with your plan as well as individual responsibilities, roles, and actions.
Below is some guidance to help you determine what steps to take based on common weather events that are typically predictable.
It’s important to keep your school community’s safety top of mind when deciding when to cancel, delay, or hold normal classes. These decisions depend on many factors, including but not limited to:
FEATURED RESOURCE
Raptor Alert Video
FEATURED RESOURCE
Webinar
A natural disaster can affect your school with little to no warning. After the event, the community expects you to have a plan. Are you ready?
Learn More.
FEATURED RESOURCE
Case Study
Knowing student status—including if the student is missing or injured—is critical. This information can easily be lost in the chaos of a reunification that relies on pen-and-paper methods. Best practice is to give teachers, staff, first responders, and incident commanders instant access to real-time student data, status, and location. Ideally, this information is housed in your emergency management software that you used to account for everyone during the severe weather event.
An emergency management system with a reunification component can improve the process and eliminate inaccuracy.
FEATURED RESOURCE
Video – Midlothian High School Case Study
Debrief and Improve Processes
“[With the reunification software, we are] able to ensure the safety of our students on campus and consult with our local police department… By [using a reunification system] that does the quick [ID] scan, it helps us to ensure we’re releasing students to the people we need to be releasing them to.”
Schools make a perfect emergency and disaster shelter for communities. There are many reasons for this: schools are in nearly every community, they are constructed to withstand strong winds, and they have large gathering spaces, like cafeterias and auditoriums, that can house hundreds—if not thousands—of evacuees.
Operating a shelter and ensuring everyone stays safe can be challenging. The shelter needs to be welcoming to the entire community, but it’s also the staff’s responsibility to make sure dangerous individuals are supervised and/or kept separated from others (like keeping registered sex offenders away from minors).
Mental health concerns, like depression and anxiety, can increase in times of disaster, especially considering that many evacuees are facing hardships like losing loved ones or their belongings to the disaster. Gang activity, drug or alcohol use, and theft are also common safety incidents that shelters must address quickly before the situation escalates.
Every entrant, including media, must sign into the shelter upon arrival and sign out before they leave. This allows you to have an accurate headcount of who is in the facility, which is critical to maintain fire safety and account for people if you need to evacuate. You should collect the date and time each person checked in, as well as their full name, contact information, and any medical conditions or special needs.
Ask certain health questions, like if the person is injured or has lost a loved one in the disaster, to determine if the evacuee should see your mental health support team. Make sure to keep all registrant information secure and protected. You also should ask COVID-19 health screening questions so you can place those with exposure risk in a separated area.
It’s important to note that it is the shelter’s responsibility to keep shelter residents safe, including keeping sex offenders separated from children.
FEATURED RESOURCE
Video – Raptor Visitor Management
Over 60,000 K-12 schools worldwide trust Raptor to screen and track their campus visitors, contractors, and volunteers.
FEATURED RESOURCE
Volunteer Management Video
See how to customize your volunteer application based on state requirements and your policies
To help maintain a safe shelter environment, it’s important that everyone is prepared to address and resolve safety issues. Some of the most common issues include:
To streamline reporting of safety incidents and to request the right help immediately—from wherever the staff member or volunteer is in the facility—you should leverage a mobile panic button. Initiating the button should alert shelter management and security personnel of the incident, so they can respond accurately and promptly before the situation escalates.
See why Raptor is the leading provider in integrated school safety software solutions.
Copyright © 2024 Raptor Technologies | All rights reserved | Privacy Notice