Imagine that you are the local school superintendent and you live in California, earthquake country. The high school has an enrollment of 3000 students, a cafeteria with food stocks for 2 weeks of breakfast and lunch, large gym with locker rooms, and a swimming pool.
A 7.3 earthquake has hit your local area during the late afternoon / early evening. Due to a slow gas leak in the middle of the night a fire breaks out in the chemistry lab and the west wing, the academic wing, of the school is on fire.
Your response to this crisis is critical and must begin as soon as disaster is detected or threatens. This phase involves mobilizing and positioning emergency equipment, getting people out of danger, providing needed food, water, shelter and medical services; and bringing damaged services back on line. Keep in mind that 300-400 families had to stay at your school for the duration of the disaster which took up to 4-5 days.
Emergencies can happen very quickly, but recovery can take a long time. After four long grueling days, the mayhem of the earthquake is over, and the people are told to return to their homes as they can. In the end there are 25 homeless families and school needs to resume. Your efforts at recovery must long-range actions needed to return the school to normal operations as quickly and completely as possible. This will involve addressing a broad swath of issues: Medical, psychological, infrastructure, facilities and operations, and the insurance, documentation, let alone getting teachers back on track with regular attendance from the children.
Preliminary inspection reveals damage to the half of the classrooms which will need to be temporarily relocated.
Your Task:
– To outline your tasks you need to get recovery underway as quickly as possible, to resume to normalcy for the children and their families.
– Explain the importance of each task, roles and responsibilities, and who benefits.
