Collaboration, Communication Key Lessons Learned
FORT MYERS, Fla. (March 19, 2008) — A mock school bus disaster drill was wrapping up in its third and final day with valuable lessons on communication and collaboration learned by local emergency personnel as well as administrators and students at Lee County Public Schools.
The South Trail Fire Protection and Rescue Service District approached Lee County to set up the training exercise following several incidents in the past year of crashes involving other motorists and school buses that resulted in minor injuries to students on board. The emergency personnel wanted to test their own crisis plans, and it gave the district the ability to do the same as well as to provide valuable safety and career training to dozens of local high school students. The three-day event held at a local college simulated a crash occurring when a motorist ran a stop sign and crashed into a school bus carrying 45 to 60 students on board.
“It allows us to see where the weaknesses occur,” said Lee County spokesman Joseph Donzelli. “Buses are designed to be safe, but we need to train our drivers on what to do as well everyone else who doesn’t drive. Everyone needs to know what to do.”
Lee County runs nationally-recognized, high-tech career centers, or comprehensive high schools and career academies, within three of its high schools that prepare students for possible careers in such fields as journalism and media, education, legal services, public safety, construction and architecture, manufacturing and engineering, and medicine. On each of the three days, students from the comprehensive high schools participated in the school bus training exercises alongside district and transportation employees as well as local fire and police personnel. For example, Donzelli said students played the roles of those injured on the bus, and he and public information counterparts with the fire and police departments held a press conference during which students played the role of the media.
Donzelli said the simulations allowed emergency services and the district to gauge 911 response time at approximately three to five minutes from the first call and about 20 minutes for the district to get transportation supervisors and other personnel to the scene of the crash. “Injured” students were tagged with different color cards to indicate the severity of their injuries. Green cards indicate minor cuts and bruises while yellow is for more serious injuries and red for critical injuries requiring immediate transport to a hospital.
“We’ve got to be able to coordinate with (emergency services) on what students are where so we can call parents to let them know about their kids and what hospital, if any, they are at,” Donzelli added. “That, from our perspective, is where a lot of our coordination is needed. Keeping track of kids is key for us.”
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