NORTHWEST ARKANSAS — Officials at local schools are working to improve their response to future emergencies, whether those emergencies are caused by weather, industrial accidents or terrorism.
The Bentonville and Rogers school districts are reviewing and revising their emergency plans and upgrading emergency equipment.
Principals and administrators are receiving training in national emergency management standards. The districts will create an online database of emergency plans and building layouts that dispatchers can access for a more effective response.
The emergency preparedness overhaul is being paid for with a $678,264 federal grant that was awarded to the school districts.
Dan Caley, a Rogers School District administrator spearheading Rogers’ part of the project, said the schools already have emergency plans in place.
Teams of teachers and administrators at each school are responsible for handling emergencies, and have a good relationship with local police and firefighters, Caley said.
Students, teachers and principals at two Rogers schools said they feel adequately prepared with the district’s current emergency protocols.
“Most of us as principals are adequately trained as far as where we’d take the kids and what to do with the building we’re in,” said James Goodwin, principal at Oakdale Middle School.
AT A GLANCE
Bentonville and Rogers School Districts Hazard Vulnerability Assessment
SafePlans, a safety and security consulting firm, conducted a review of the likelihood and possible severity of a variety of possible emergencies, including utility outages, storms, terrorism and hazardous material accidents.
Each category was ranked by probability and severity. Those scores were averaged into risk, represented as a percentage. The higher the percentage, the higher the risk.
50 percent: Human-related events, such as a shooter, terrorism and bomb threats.
47 percent: Technological events, such as loss of electricity, natural gas or communications.
47 percent: Naturally occurring events, such as tornados, ice storms and earthquakes.
39 percent: Hazardous material events, such as spills and chemical terrorism.
Source: Rogers School District
Cynthia Garduno is a fifth-grader and junior fire marshal at Bonnie Grimes Elementary School. As a junior fire marshal, she helps check classroom doors and organize other students during fire drills.
She said she thinks the school is well prepared for a fire or other emergency.
“You can hear what’s happening even if you’re in the bathroom or something,” she said. “The intercom’s really loud.”
Chris DeWitt is the transportation director for the Bentonville School District.
DeWitt, who is leading that district’s use of the grant, said the district has an effective emergency plan already in place, but the upgrade could eventually save children.
“My kids are in the same schools,” he said. “If there is an emergency, I want to know how the schools will respond.”
The application for the grant named some potential threats to the school districts.
The biggest threat is bad weather, especially tornados, according to the grant application. Staff and students need training to be able to act as first responders until firefighters and medics arrive, according to the application.
The districts are also at risk from nearby factories and railroads that could expose schools to hazardous materials, Caley said.
On Sept. 14, an ammonia pipe at Zero Mountain Cold Storage ruptured, releasing hundreds of pounds of ammonia. Lowell Elementary School, part of the Rogers School District, is southeast of Zero Mountain.
The school did not have to be evacuated, but the incident illustrated the potential for an industrial accident to have an impact on schools, Caley said.
The grant application states that each school building will create a plan for how to deal with industrial accidents, such as proper evacuation and shutting off air conditioning units to prevent contaminating the schools’ air.
Information about the schools’ emergency preparations will be kept in a system accessible to emergency responders.
“They will know how many fire extinguishers we have and where they are, they will know where our rally points are, where we want to put the media, where a helicopter can land,” DeWitt said.
A floor plan and photographs of every classroom will be available to emergency responders. The responders will receive hard copies and a flash drive of the plan, DeWitt said.
“It helps a lot if we can all be on the same page,” Bentonville Fire Chief Dan White said. “I would hate to be running blind if anything happened. If the schools were carrying out a plan and we were not aware, our plans could crash.”
Bentonville plans to include emergency responders when running through a mock emergency later this year, DeWitt said.
Tom Jenkins, chief of the Rogers Fire Department, said any extra effort schools devote to emergency planning is helpful.
School officials will get training in the National Emergency Management System, which Jenkins said will be especially helpful.
The system was created after Sept. 11, 2001, to make sure emergency services could work and communicate with each other. Having school officials trained in the same system will mean that schools will be able to integrate more smoothly into emergency responses, Jenkins said.
For example, the system specifies that radio communication should be in plain language, not codes. It also specifies how to create and follow a command structure for an emergency response, Jenkins said.
“Everybody has to be on the same sheet of music when responding to emergencies,” he said.