School Safety Preparedness Drill: India
The School Safety Preparedness Drill was initiated by GeoHazards Society to commemorate the Kangra Earthquake of 1905 which killed over 19,000 people on April 4th 1905, as it is important to keep the memories of past disasters alive to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Since 2009, we have been organising the School Safety Preparedness Drills in various States to mark the anniversary of the Kangra earthquake and to get schools in earthquake prone regions started on their path towards preparedness. Starting with a drill across a few north Indian states in which 10,000 people took part, the number of people taking part has grown to 50,893 in April 2013.
With the recent reminders of our exposure to hazards coming in from prepared nations such as New Zealand and Japan, it is imperative that we in India start taking swift steps towards preparedness. The School Safety Preparedness Drill is an earthquake drill based on a scenario earthquake happening near enough to affect the school. At 11:00 am on the 4th of April every year, all the students and staff of many schools in hazard prone areas in India practice the Drop, Cover, Hold and then evacuate to a pre-decided safe location, and carry out the necessary post evacuation procedures.This is an initiative of GeoHazards Society, the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, and GeoHazards International.
Originally, the drill was organised with Tibetan schools in earthquake zones which soon spread to other schools in earthquake prone States. In 2009, over 10,000 students in Tibetan Schools in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi and Meghalaya took part in the drill (report). With the addition of students from Tibetan Schools in Jammu & Kashmir, and West Bengal, the number of students participating in the drill rose up to 16000 in 2010 (report) and 17500 in 2011 (report). In 2012 the included non-Tibetan schools from Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh taking the total number of participating students and teachers went up to 28410 (report).School children in about 165 Schools (in J & K, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, West Bengal, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh), and a school in Myanmar took part in the mass earthquake preparedness activity of 2013 (report).
This year the School Safety Preparedness Drill is going to be held at 11:00 am IST on Friday the 4th April 2014.This year also schools from North India, NE India and all Tibetan schools are going to participate in the mass earthquake drill. Schools within the National School Safety Programme (NSSP) are also going to participate in the drill. National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has already instructed 17 NSSP states within earthquake zone IV & V to organise the drill in all 400 schools within each state. Please click here to read the letter to the states.
Some useful resource materials:
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