Disaster drill at the Lalmatia school! [Bangladesh]
On 10th March, Lalmatia Housing Society School and College conducted a drill for earthquake and fire disasters. Bangladesh celebrates the National Disaster Preparedness Day on 10 March, and it was a perfect day to check the school’s DRR plans and DRR infrastructure usage through a drill.
The school had to reduce student participation in order to minimize the risk of COVID-19 infection. But people from the school disaster management committee, teachers, staffs, and residents from the local community managed to participate in the drill. During the drill, they checked the roles and activities of the school disaster management committee and its sub-groups, and also practiced firefighting using water collected from the rainwater tank.
In Bangladesh, schools have an obligation to conduct evacuation drills once a year as per the Disaster Management Act. But due to a lack of know-how and low priority given to drills, many schools do not organize such drills. For the Lalmatia school, the event was in fact the very first time that a drill was organized. “It was the first time for me to join such a drill and I’m so glad. We should continue this.”, “Even though we checked who will do what before the drill, there were unknown or unexpected aspects that were identified during the actual drill”, the participants said. After the drill, they discussed the knowledge that they gained, and identified areas which needed improvement, so that they can better respond to disasters and the school can be better prepared.
