Emergency Exercise
Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2004 1:40 p.m.
Ha ha, I just survived the school emergency exercise.
Ever since 9-11 and the recent spate of bombings/ bomb threats, the Education Ministry makes it a point to train all schools to be ready for emergency situations. Not that it's anything new, we've always had fire drills in the past, it's just that this time we have to go through the whole shebang - with the civil defence, police, parents and press involved - to make the situation as realistic as possible for the teachers and students, to test their preparedness.
I was a simulator. I played the press, along with a another colleague, Darren.. :-) (Otherwise I would be with my other colleagues in the Warden Team, combing the school for casualties and missing people).
Anyway Darren and I decided to be cheeky and not cooperate too much with the press liaison officer or whatever they call those people. We brought a video-cum-digital camera and a cordless mike (no batteries) with us and as soon as we arrived at the gate I was shoving that mike under everyone's faces and shouting questions at them. And when they refused to let us in, we moved from gate to gate to find a way in and tried to interview the kids who were guarding the gate. Luckily for us (though not a very wise move on the part of the school, I should add, if this had been a real-life situation) we were let in after only ten minutes of noise-making and led to the press waiting room. The principal met up with us just outside the room to issue a brief statement regarding the status quo of the situation (number of casualties, missing persons, incident site, etc). So our curiosity was satisfied for awhile and we decided to give the folks a break.
After being inside the waiting room for ten minutes, we tried the missing cell phone ruse (needed to call the office to inform them of the delay in the press conference, blah blah). It got our poor colleagues flustered but they still didn't let us out (they didn't lend us a cell phone either). Then I really needed to use the washroom. I used the opportunity to make a break and tried to interview the "distraught" parents and students in the counselling room, just to ruffle their feathers a bit. When I returned to the waiting room, it was time for the press conference. I asked five or more hard questions, like whether negligence was the cause of the fire, and whether the teacher who was in the lab when the explosion hapenned was new, the sort of thing puts the school's credibility on the line.
With that, the role play was over and we were de-roled in the library; all the simulators just sat around and talked about their experience and surrendered our role passes by way of relinquishing the roles we were playing. Lunch was served right after. Good thing cos I was ravenous.
I did have fun. Didn't expect getting into the role to be so easy. Not that I was a Barbara Walters but at least there wasn't a time when I was at a loss for words and didn't know how I was supposed to behave. So I think both Darren and I did a good job of testing the press liaison team.
Alright, I must get back to the de-briefing session. The exercise started at 11-ish in the morning and we're still talking about it now. *yawn* I wish I could go home already.
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