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Recent Tornado Strikes Provide Clear Evidence that Schools Should Focus Appropriately on Tornado Preparedness

March 4, 2012 by

The deadly near miss in Indiana this week should provide a clear warning to all school and public safety officials. Tornadoes are deadly and no school in a region where they can occur should ignore them. As a number of states where tornadoes occur regularly still do not require tornado drills, there are still many schools without a written tornado sheltering procedure where no tornado sheltering drill has been conducted in years.

We have seen this many times in our school hazard and vulnerability assessment projects. In the last two years, we have had client districts in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Virginia that not only did not have written tornado sheltering procedures in place, but where some central office administrators also objected to the recommendations for tornado drills to be added. They felt that these types of drills would take up too much class time in relation to the likelihood that a tornado would hit an occupied school. Tornado strikes occurred near schools in all three regions within a year.

While most schools in tornado prone regions do have written plans and conduct tornado drills, we have seen more than one instance where a school district has conducted an active shooter full – scale exercise while tornadoes, hazardous materials incidents and earthquakes have been virtually ignored as a threat. We have seen many more instances where school officials were using gymnasiums or other open span areas for tornado shelters. We recommend that school administrators ask area public safety officials to visit their buildings and evaluate the shelter areas they are using.

The advanced planning and decisions by administrators in Henrysville, Indiana clearly saved many young lives this week. The results would not have been the same had they not taken tornadoes seriously.

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Good School Safety, Security and Crisis Planning Ideas Abound

March 2, 2012 by

One of the cool things about what we do at Safe Havens is that we get to see so many different approaches to school safety, security and emergency preparedness as we visit schools across the United States and abroad. I have seen better school security practices in some schools I visited by donkey drawn cart and dugout canoe in the Mekong Delta than I have seen in some public and independent schools in of the most affluent parts of the country. That said, American schools generally do tend to do a better job in many areas of school safety in contrast to what we see in South Africa, the U.K., Canada, Bolivia and other places we have worked.

While schools in the U.K. typically have far better access control than the majority of their U.S. counterparts billions of dollars of federal funding, research, a steady stream of frightening media coverage following major incidents like Monday’s deadly school shooting in Chardon, Ohio have created a lot of positive change in American school safety. Sadly, we see dangerous situations in schools on a daily basis and still encounter the pervasive “it can’t happen here” mentality from school employees, students and parents”. While people in reality know deep down that a major school crisis event such as a tornado, fire, earthquake or active shooter situation could occur in their community, they often do not seem to face these types of risks as part of the reality of possibilities on a more practical day to day. This is why we so often see such massive changes in safety, security and emergency preparedness after an event occurs. Once injuries and deaths have actually occurred, people typically begin to assign a much greater priority to safety than they did prior to the incident, regardless of how much they had in place prior to the event.

One big advantage we have in the United States, Canada and in a number of other developed countries is the ability to see what our neighbors are doing to improve school safety to get ideas for improvement. It is extremely common for us to find an exceptional practice in one school system or non-public school that is not in use ten miles away at another school in a nearby town. With public school systems, it is extremely common to see a practice in place in one school that would benefit all schools in the district if it were implemented at those schools. This can even crop up in litigation when a school safety expert witness points out that a practice that is in place in several schools in the district would likely have averted a tragedy had it been also used in a school where an incident has not occurred.

Taking the time to visit other schools in the region can help spread new and effective ideas effectively. Many of these ideas are inexpensive, practical and effective school safety solutions.

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Do we have good “people detectors” in our schools?

February 29, 2012 by

As with every multiple victim school shooting in recent years, media coverage of Monday’s school shooting in Chardon, Ohio has been at times heavily focused on what warning signs might have been ignored or missed prior to the shooting. I caution people to be careful as they evaluate information on these situations from the media as we have already seen many instances of inaccurate information in this case as we have with past targeted acts of school violence.

In his excellent book Columbine author Dave Cullen’s extensive research into the actual occurrences clearly counters the many myths that arose out of that tragedy. His book refutes the still common claim that bullying played a major role in the event, that the shooters were “loners” and that the infamous “trenchcoat mafia” never existed. At the same time, each of these events does and should make us ask the probing questions relating to actions, words, social network communications, behaviors and other observable indicators that have often when detected, helped to avert tragedy.

The near miss at East High School in Green Bay, Wisconsin is a case in point. Alertness, connectivity between students and staff and superb collaboration between school and law enforcement officials prevented a great tragedy at that well run school where people are connected to other people to a high degree. To paraphrase how one United States Department of Education official put it – we need people detectors in our schools.

Working in a school district where we stopped multiple planned school shootings, one planned school bombing and a planned double suicide deeply ingrained the importance of school employees being structurally as well as personally connected to the students they have chosen to serve. Fortunately, school officials today have considerably better information than their counterparts did when the per capita school homicide rate was much higher in the 1970 to 1980 time period. This most recent tragedy serves as yet another reminder that terrible acts of school violence can occur in great schools in nice communities.

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Role Specific School Crisis Planning can be a Life Saver

February 29, 2012 by

 

Role specific school crisis plans

Role specific school crisis plans can help staff perform more effective mental simulation to prepare for crisis events

 

 

Role specific school crisis plans can better prepare school staff to utilize mental simulation to prepare for emergencies

As the recent school shooting in Chardon, Ohio demonstrates, any and every employee in a school may be required to take immediate action to minimize injuries and prevent the loss of human life. Properly preparing employees to handle a wide variety of emergency situations through training, empowerment and practice. This requires that role relevant and specific information be provided because different employees do not do the same thing in a crisis event. For example, a building principal in an elementary school does not perform the same action steps as a custodian, who typically performs different action steps than a food service employee or a school bus driver. As another example, if all employees in a school operate off of the same emergency planning component and an action step is to call 911, all 75 employees in a school may be tied up for several minutes while they jam the 911 center with redundant calls.

There are several ways to address role specific school crisis planning. One of these approaches involves the creation of role specific emergency charts for key job classifications as has been done as a statewide planning concept in Wisconsin and Indiana. While this approach requires far more time in the plan development phase, it can reduce the amount of training time needed for a large number of employees. Emergency reference charts should not be viewed as an instructional manual to follow step by step during the first critical seconds of a crisis. Instead they are a valuable tool to help staff develop what Dr. Gary Klein refers to as a base of knowledge. Klein’s research shows that people can perform exceptionally well in making life and death decisions but they need practice using a concept known as mental simulation. For school employees to get increased benefit from this research – based concept, they need to be provided appropriate responses to a wide array of situations rather than just a few situations that we fear the most like active shooter situations.

Role specific planning is one way to help afford a variety of school employees with a good framework of experience so they can be more prepared to meet any crisis situation they encounter. American educators have been forced to address a wide range of crisis events such as the September 11 terrorist attacks which required immediate action by school officials, an antipersonnel grenade detonating in a rural Georgia high school band room, a teacher committing suicide in a homemade gas chamber he constructed and a number of other seemingly bizarre incidents that most schools would not plan for specifically. Role specific school crisis planning can be a valuable school safety tool.

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New School Safety Training and Evaluation System Makes Every Second Count

February 28, 2012 by

New Learning and Evaluation System to enhance School Safety

Safe Havens has been scripting, filming and editing for more than a year to develop a powerful new emergency preparedness evaluation and staff development system designed to help improve the ability of school staff to make life and death decisions in the first 30 seconds of a crisis. This system is based on one-on-one evaluations with more than 500 school employees from around the nation and the research of a number of top experts. This system Safe Topics – The First 30 Seconds was released today. You can view a powerful 90-second demonstration video on the home page of our web site at http://www.safehavensinternational.org.

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School Shooting in Chardon, Ohio Reminds us of Critical Aspects of School Shooting Incidents

February 27, 2012 by

Lessons learned from school shootings

Today’s tragic multiple victim school shooting in Chardon, Ohio is yet another reminder of some of the more critical prevention and mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery efforts that should be properly covered in school crisis plans. While no plans can be expected to be perfect, we have seen many instances where top flight school safety planning has enabled school and public safety officials to properly respond to such incidents and in a number of instances to prevent them from occurring in the first place

I should be clear that none of the following comments are intended to imply that staff at the school or in the district have made any mistakes in any of these areas. These are instead offered as lessons learned from our involvement in the wake of dozens of past school shootings that have occurred at times when students are not on class as well as for multiple victim school shootings in general.

• A number of what the United Secret Service and United States Department of Education define as targeted acts of violence have taken place at times when students are not in class. This demonstrates the need for schools to conduct drills relating to key functional protocols like room clear, reverse evacuation, emergency lockdown and evacuation at times when students are in different locations and at different times of the school day. For those who have never conducted a lockdown during passing times or a lunch period, it can be a most revealing experience.

• These types of incidents also highlight the need to provide written plan instructions, training and to conduct drills to empower staff and students to initiate life-saving action on their own without first contacting an administrator when it is appropriate to do so.

Actual incidents as well as extensive assessment simulations with hundreds of school employees from small, mid-sized and large school districts around the nation has revealed that school employees are often well prepared to function with direction under life and death stress but are frequently still not well prepared to be the person to initiate life–saving actions in the first thirty seconds of an event. The most powerful example of this is the deadly 1958 school fire at the Our Lady of Angels School fire which killed 95 students and employees. Staff at the school waited approximately five minutes before pulling the fire alarm while they tried to locate an administrator at the school.  We have seen similar stress reactions in more recent mass casualty events at schools.

• These events demonstrate the importance of focused mental simulation of a wide range of types of crisis situations. A number of researchers have documented the profound effects of life and death stress on the human mind and body. We have found that an overemphasis on active shooter scenarios can reduce the ability of staff to function for any type of incident including active shooter situations. Researchers have found that having a broad base of knowledge can help people make better decisions regardless of the type of crisis they face. While the failure to conduct drills and exercises relating to active shooter situations can be deadly, too many lockdown and active shooter drills and exercises can also be quite dangerous.

• School officials should plan and practice making decisions, communicating with both internal key staff and with area emergency responders and to effectively communicate with the public promptly but accurately in the wake of a major school crisis event. Formal training or school staff in the National Incident Management System and crisis communications are both important.

• School and public safety officials should be well prepared to perform key strategic functions such as off-site family reunification and to initiate these actions very early in the crisis. For example, the decision to begin off site family reunification should normally be made in the first five to ten minutes of the event in most types of situations. This is because parents and relatives of students often rush to the affected school during a crisis and can overwhelm responders.

There are also a number of strategies that can help to prevent these types of incidents. Successful interventions have occurred since the early 1990’s when a series of planned school shootings were averted by Bibb County Public School Police Officers and School Social workers. The concepts developed in this school system combined with techniques developed by the United States Secret Service and the United States Department of Education have been utilized to prevent numerous planned attacks at schools since that time.

• Training in visual weapons screening to help staff recognize the specific physical behaviors that can indicate that a person is carrying a gun

• Multi-disciplinary threat assessment teams

• Informational efforts to educate students to report potentially dangerous statements and behaviors

More recently, educators have been receiving on other proven tools to recognize dangerous individuals and situations that have been in use in the military, law enforcement and emergency medicine for many years. For example, many educators now receive formal training in an evidence based concept know as pattern matching and recognition. This training has helped cardiac units in hospitals reduce mortality by as much as 50% and is now being used to help school custodians, teachers, counselors, school bus drivers and other employees to detect troubled students based on subtle but clearly noticeable cues that something is not right.

We hope this information is of help to you in your efforts to make schools even safer. American K-12 schools and their community partners have made tremendous strides in reducing the homicide rate in our schools over the past three decades but more opportunities for improvement exist. Again, we in no way intend anything in this blog to reflect specifically on today’s tragic event. The information we have at this point on the incident has not been confirmed which would make any such critiques unreliable at this point.

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