I am on our school's crisis response team and we are developing crisis plans for everything from fire, natural disasters, and bio-chemical and terrorism (external or internal). We have the FEMA and Red Cross materials, but I would like any advice on anything you think we need or need to plan for. We are developing emergency kits with various supplies, as well as FAK for classrooms.

Some questions first:

1: Will your school become a shelter in any of the local response scenarios?

2: Does you school have comm gear? (2 meter Ham rig and antenna at least)

3: What is the level of community involvement? PTA? Students?

4: Does you school have a Gymnasium? Stadium? Porta-poties? Basement?

5: Is your area subject to Earthquake? Flood? Tornado?

6: Does your area of concern - Crises Planning - include criminal violence aka Colombine?

7: Do you have, on staff, EMT basic or better trauma trained individuals or teams?

sometimes the questions are more helpful than the answers.

The first step we went through is to prepare a risk matrix, in which several of your design team members brainstorm scenarios of possible risks that could affect your school or its surroundings or even your students. We then ordered them by degree of possibility and worked on a plan for each scenario in that order.

I appreciate the questions.

1, Yes, We are a Safe School -- I.e. we have 3 Tunnels(safe rooms) built into the school hallway. Supposed to withstand F-5 tornadoes, and some earthquakes. The city has a key for weekends and I was told that we would be a health center if conditions warranted it due to terrorism.
2. I have 4 small 2 way radios in my department.(2 mile range) We used them when we had to use shelter for tornadoes a month ago. The city police can monitor the freq.
3.Right now mainly administration and faculty. City government as well.
4, Detached gym
5. Yes to earthquakes and tornadoes, Floods cannot get into the school.
6. Yes
7. School nurse and EMT (part-time); some of us have 1st aid/CPR training.

This is an ugly topic but thought I'd menton it anyway.

Your team should talk with local law enforcement about their reaction to a "shooting in progress", such as what happened at Columbine. If your local police force dosen't have a policy or prepared reaction to such an event they should. If they already do you need to know how to work with them in terms of communication and removing your students to a safe area.

BTW new studies have shown that in many of these types of situations the most effective first responses have been from armed citizens who arrived first, several have been school faculty. Food for thought. Mac

Sheltering:

The obvious would be cots / blankets / privacy screens (these can be rope and curtain) and consumables especially water. The often overlooked would be eyeshades / ear-plugs as sleep aids, some cute stuffed animals to quiet the children some form of administrative protocol to adjudicate conflict among those being sheltered. Students and PTA can be called upon to supplie some of these items. e.g. cute stuffed animals (these must be new), old (but clean) bed sheets can be used for privacy screens, eye-shades and ear-plugs can be donated. PTA volunteers can be inducted for shelter management.

Comms:

Coordinate with your local HAM club, they are often looking to get involved with schools as an outreach activity of their own. ARES volunteers could setup a good 2 meter or even HF rig quickly if the antenna was in place ahead of time. This would provide you with the ability to communicate out of area if the police were too busy to handle health and welfare messages for you. Also local responders may be overwhelmed and unable to respond or monitor your FRS / GMRS radios. Being able to reach out of the disaster area is very helpful.

Community involvement:

Get the PTA and the students involved. After all they will be the ones hunkered down in your safe-tunnels. They are also a great source for donated material. Have students / Parents supply and stock Emergency desk supply kits - (a liter of water, power bar, light stick, whistle, warm windbreaker, comfort item) California has a specification for the student quake kit somewhere. Have parents help in supplying your shelter facility. Have fundraisers for needed expensive stuff such as cots - water storage - generators. Have students and parents participate in practice emergency scenarios. Use the less threatening ones such as tornado rather than terrorist - the drill is very similar and it will get them used to it. You use fire drills don't you?

Try to get the scenario to run with and without local government. You may be completely isolated with only those on campus.

Facilities:

Get some porta-poties. If your plumbing is out and you have half the town in your tunnels / gymnasium for a week you will want them. The stadium is a useful place for setting up recovery administration after the storm if you have some large tents. Remember, since you are listed as a shelter facility you may have many extra people looking to you beyond the normal population of the campus. Determine a potential location for a temporary cemetary and have shovels or equip your stadium tractor with a back hoe attachment. If there are large numbers of casualties you won't want them festering in the sun and you may not have electricity for the walkin fridge or access to the morgue.

Earthquakes:

Since you are vulnerable to these you can't count on sheltering inside. Have some tents on hand.

Colombine:

Check with local regs but you might want an armed staffer. If your local sherrif department takes volunteer deputies that may be a way to accomplish this. Have someone on staff become a deputy with a carry permit. Don't advertise this to anyone those who need protection will freak out! Just do it. Also get more staff (all if possible) trained on handling major trauma. This might just be first-responder. You may be able to get the Red-cross to use your school for holding classes and as a kick-back get them to train the staff for free to the first-responder level. If you have a volunteer deputy and they bring a weapon on-site no one should know -ever!(unless you have to stop the fool kid with the uzi that they brought from home.)
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Work to resolve social and home issues rather than trying to teach the kids not to shoot people. If some kid is bad enough off to kill himself or someone else knowing that they shouldn't have a gun is useless. Attack the problem not the symptom
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EMT:

Work with the EMT to ensure that they have all the supplies that they would have in the ambulance to stabilize and treat casualties. Have, at least, 1 if not more AED on hand. Encourage them to upgrade to paramedic (paying the tuition would help). Encourage them to take Wilderness first aid also as this course considers stabilizing individuals who may take a while to get to definitive treatment and that is often the case in disaster situations. Encourage more staff to get this training - you may be dealing with large numbers of casualties and One EMT can help one patient.

Have everyone involved in administering the disaster scenarios understand the Mass Casualty Triage protocol. The worst thing that an EMT can face is hysterical, poorly trained, bystanders questioning their decision that an individual with an arterial bleed in late stage decompensated shock must be abandoned in order that they may aid someone who has a chance of making it.

miniMe,
I appreciate the info, the police chief teaches 2 periods a day and is working on becoming our resource officer so he is involved in the crisis planning team. As for some of the other ideas I think they are great, just a matter of determining needs and areas to store items. I do have about 1000 gallons of water in a pair of fish tanks if worst came to worst.