Disaster Preparation

I found several things from our disaster preparation discussion very interesting, but towards the end of the discussion one thing in particular stood out to me. When we were discussing the different types of drills we do in our home institutions, lockdown or "code red" drills came up. We had these drills in my own high school, where we had to act as if an intruder was on the premises and all hide on one side of the classroom, while the teacher locked the door and put a colored piece of paper in the door window (green for the all clear, red for we need help). These drills became standard in my high school after the Virgina Tech shootings on April 16th, 2007 -- perhaps because of North Carolina's relative proximity to Virginia. However, I was surprised to learn that several of my American classmates did not have similar drills in their schools. Even in my town which is very safe and has a low crime rate, a few schools have had to go into lockdown in the past due to a bank robbery or something similar around their premises. It seems to me that, especially after 9/11 and the increase in students bringing/using guns in school, these drills would be practiced at least yearly in most schools.

Most universities have adopted some sort of emergency notification system over text message, which is tested at least twice a year at my university. This is a step in the right direction, but American schools' relative lack of preparedness could be taken as a sign of the notion "this wouldn't happen here, only in another area." We have discussed how that mindset partially contributed to the immense of human loss in Japan after people were unprepared, unaware what to do, or assumed they had enough time to escape the tsunami or that the waters wouldn't get very high. To me, it seems that people in general need to reevaluate their priorities and make sure they are prepared for any type of disaster situation that were to arise.