India: Classroom tips to survive a quake

By Maitreyee H Andique

There are no tremors in their two-storey DAV school building in Gurgaon, but the corporate executive tells the packed classroom of 15-year olds to imagine that an earth quake is shaking the school.

What should they do when a real earthquake strikes, he asks. “Drop, cover, hold,“ the boys and girls chant in unison and quickly dash under their hard-top desks.

Vineet Laroiya, an instrumentation engineering employed in the local arm of Bechtel Corp., a multinational engineering firm, volunteers a few hours every other Saturday morning to teach children disaster prevention through learn-by-action drills.

Mixing humour and informal chats, Laroiya and two other colleagues are at the DAV school in Gurgaon to give tips to children and teachers on how to protect themselves during an earthquake. In partnership with GeoHazards Society, an arm of the US-based GeoHazards International, a non-profit organization that works for earthquake safety, they conduct evacuation drills from classrooms to playgrounds and back, teach students to team up for first-aid efforts, and often suggest how small structural adjustments inside schools - like hooking book shelves to walls and slipping anti-slide mats under computers - can minimize risks.

Such initiatives are baby steps in “risks education“, an issue that has received scant attention in India so far, even as skyscraper offices, shopping malls, and residential high rises shoot up everywhere at a frenetic rate. Street riots and terror attacks are also a growing risk. While building collapses, fire accidents and stampedes have been commonly reported in Indian temples and schools, the topic rarely forms part of a broader debate, many say.

The volunteers from Bechtel Group Foundation have, however, been talking to schools (“We like to go easy. We don't want to scare them,“ says Laroiya) for more than three years, reaching out to more than 5,000 students - training Anita Makkar, principal of DAV School in Sector 14, describes as essential “life skills“ students must learn in the modern age of uncertainties.

“With increasing threats of terrorist attacks, hoax bomb calls and possible street riots, it's a vital training today,“ Makkar says.

Experts say few hospitals and offices in the country have guidelines for mass evacuation as is the practice in countries such as the US, Japan and New Zealand; in less than a month, two devastating earthquakes occurred in New Zealand and Japan, which left thousands dead and homeless.

“It's just not in our culture to be prepared,“ says Shivangi Chavda, chief executive officer at Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society India (Seeds India), a non-profit organization that works in risk reduction.

Big hotels and shopping malls have emergency exits, but it isn't clear whether they orient anyone to use them. Offices, she said, often don't make alternate arrangements to keep their data secure.

However, at least one of the city's largest mall, the 4,80,000 sq. ft DLF Place in south Delhi claimed that they follow regular safety procedures. “We have daily audits for both safety and security. Mock drills are conducted every six months,“ Arindam Kunar, vice-president, mall management, at DLF Ltd, said.

Because children are most vulnerable during crises, the government believes educating children early about risks can be beneficial lessons for life. In recent years, free manuals on school safety have been distributed to schools by the home ministry's National Disaster Management division. To encourage interest, the subject also forms part of the Central Board of Secondary Education school curriculum.

And in villages and small towns, where schools often serve as temporary shelters during floods and earthquakes, they have become the natural location for conducting mass training, particularly in states that have witnessed massive natural and human-induced destruction.

Some 971 students died during the 2001 Gujarat earthquake. In Kashmir, the 2005 quake claimed 7,000 young lives, according to news reports. Gujarat today, for example, has taken action to fit fire-safety gear in some 1,600 government schools, according to B. R. Patel, director, Gujarat Disaster Management Authority.

In many ways, big global disasters such as the Asian tsunami in 2004, which left thousands dead and missing, have been catalysts of India's disaster management policy, prompting the creation of a separate law - the 2005 Disaster Management Act. Pressure for educating the public also came that year from the Hyogo Framework of Action, an international effort backed by the United Nations, with member states agreeing to report on their disaster reduction drive.

“School safety programme has been critical in raising awareness,“ says G. Padmanabhan, emergency analyst at the United Nations Development Programme, New Delhi. “Worldwide, the stress now is on prevention by identifying risks and acting on it.“

Experts say unsafe structures built while ignoring standard codes is a dangerous trend and too few people in India are trained to enforce stringent building regulations.

“There's a gap between policy and practice. India lacks the rigorous assessment procedures such as in the US or New Zealand,“ says C.V.R Murthy, a professor at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Voluntary groups such as Seeds India and GeoHazards Society are, however, trying to fill in this gap with their expertise. Seeds trains masons to make safer buildings and is involved in retrofitting work - or structural renovation - in quake-affected schools in Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. GeoHazards, on the other hand, organizes training for schools and civil engineers in cyclone-prone Orissa and in the seismically sensitive North-East. One of its biggest feats is the “Tibetan School Shake-out“ - some 16,000 students attending these community schools gather for a mass anti-quake drill across the country on 4 April every year.

While states have undertaken massive training in government-aided schools, it's often desultory and uncoordinated. Delhi, for example, is reported to have imparted safety lessons in more than 4,000 schools in recent years, but many of them do not possess fire extinguishers or sirens for emergency announcements. Those that have the equipment are not taught how to use them, according to Umesh Rai, a street play artiste who travels to these schools to bring awareness about safety issues on behalf of the Capital's disaster management authority.

Private schools, on the other hand, have been slow in accepting these programs because of a lack of initiative and budget constraints. Fewer than 5% schools in Delhi have a ready disaster management plan, Hari Kumar, executive director of GeoHazards Society, said.

A few such as Sadhu Vaswani International School for Girls, a private institution run by the Sindhi community in south Delhi, however, stand out. Way back in 2003, it had approached the Vellore Institute of Technology to design a safety plan for the school. Today, it conducts regular mock drills, has fire hoses at strategic locations inside the building, and escape route maps are pasted on the walls of each classroom. Emergency numbers, including the local bakery, are kept ready to reach out for help.

The school carries out regular hazard hunts, too, which often lead to new discoveries - and action. Two months ago, its kitchen was moved out of the teaching complex after the authorities perceived it as a potential hazard. And recently, Asha Joshi, the teacher who coordinates the school's safety programme, observed that one side of the thick hedge flanking the school's entrance was obstructing smooth evacuation. Her check list now includes coating all glass panes with a plastic film, to reduce splinter exposure, and uprooting a section of the hedge. All this needs money and convincing the management, Joshi said.

The hardest part though is persuading everyone that mock drills are serious affairs. Sanjivni, a class XI student who's part of the school's risk management team, says it's tough to round up everyone to open grounds during these sessions. “Usually, teachers continue checking copies in the staff room after the siren goes off and the children say `let me finish eating the apple' since they know the real one hasn't come.“