Fall 2005

Endangered Schools Researchers help urban school system prepare for emergency situations. by Jane M. Sanders

ON A LATE SPRING morning, a massive explosion erupted at a petroleum tank farm near a metro Atlanta elementary school. An evacuation was necessary, but as it got under way, an estranged parent entered the school, grabbed his kindergartener and, through his English-speaking child, warned school personnel that he had a weapon and would use it if he was not allowed to take his child out of the school.

photo by Stanley Leary GTRI helped organize a tabletop emergency exercise involving a simulated petroleum tank farm explosion near a DeKalb County school in metro Atlanta. School employees and top state and local emergency response officials participated in the event. (300-dpi JPEG version - 702K)

Though this scenario only occurred on paper during a tabletop emergency exercise, the potential exists for it to happen in the DeKalb County School System, one of the nation’s largest and most diverse with more than 100,000 students and 15,000 employees in 156 facilities. DeKalb is home to potential terrorist targets, including the Centers for Disease Control and the Southeast Petroleum Reserve, and is also vulnerable to natural disasters, such as tornadoes.

“The DeKalb County School System has recognized the potential for emergency situations in its district, and it has become one of the more innovative school systems in implementing new technologies to help prepare for a crisis situation,” says Dara O’Neil, a research associate in the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI).

O’Neil and her GTRI colleagues are providing technology and policy assistance, and emergency preparedness evaluation to the DeKalb system through the school district’s Schools United Responding to Emergencies (SURE) initiative. The U.S. Department of Education awarded a grant to DeKalb to fund this program.

In May 2005, O’Neil helped organize the tabletop emergency exercise involving the gas tank farm explosion. About 20 school employees and top state and local emergency response officials participated in the event at Oakcliff Elementary School. The Office of Homeland Security- Georgia Emergency Management Agency (OHS-GEMA) sponsored the exercise to facilitate collaboration in the development of plans, resource use and training under the Incident Command System for emergencies. The school system used it as an opportunity for improving its emergency response.

“The tabletop drill is a very effective way for a building leader to review plans, get feedback and make improvements – all without the trauma of a real emergency,” says DeKalb administrative coordinator Terry Segovis, the principal at Oakcliff when the exercise took place. “As we moved through the exercise, I was able to test our plans, hear from the responders about the quality of those plans and make some important connections along the way.”

In the exercise, the principal coordinated his decision to evacuate with police and fire officials. When the scenario was complicated by the estranged parent holding his child hostage, exercise moderator Ray Doyle of GTRI introduced participants to a high-tech collaborative mapping tool developed by GTRI for OHS-GEMA. With the Geographic Tool for Visualization and Collaboration (GTVC), participants were able to see the distance between the tank farm and the school and the best route to take for the evacuation.

Also, GTVC was linked to panoramic images of every entrance, classroom, hallway and closet of the school – a video database that O’Neil and GTRI colleague Jim Demmers are building for the school system. The database will be useful in conjunction with GTVC in planning a response to such a hostage situation or other emergency.

The exercise and discussions among participants continued until the scenario concluded with all school children and staff safely evacuated to a nearby middle school and apprehension of the estranged parent. The consensus was that the DeKalb system responded satisfactorily during the exercise, O’Neil says.

“We were tasked with providing a verbal explanation of our response protocol, the resources we anticipated using and the tactics we would use to mitigate the issue,” recalls Jim Hanson, deputy director of public safety for the school system. “It required the responders to think on their feet and provide solutions to a fluid situation. The beauty of this kind of exercise is that it allows you to make mistakes without consequence. Therefore, you have the opportunity to learn and evaluate your decisions or responses.”

Among the lessons learned were the needs for:

better integration of emergency response policies between the DeKalb County School System and local police and fire departments – with regard to roles each agency would play;

more training for school officials and emergency responders in the procedures of the National Incident Management System and the Incident Command System;

using two-way radios and land lines, instead of cell phones, during a crisis. “Cell phone lines often get jammed during an emergency situation because of high demand within one geographic area,” O’Neil explains;

developing a backup method for notifying parents of evacuation plans and pickup locations;

establishment of ties with the private sector to obtain donated resources for emergency situations;

“This exercise was a good opportunity to get first responders and school personnel to know each other face-to-face under fairly normal circumstances,” O’Neil says. “That kind of contact helps them later when there’s a crisis.”

CONTACTS:

Dara O’Neil at 404-894-8445 or dara.oneil@gtri.gatech.edu

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Last updated: January 4, 2006