MindSpinner

A few weeks ago, we had our first tornado drill at school. The safest place to be during a tornado is, I am assured, the boys’ locker room area beneath the gym. It’s like a bunker at the end of a long hallway, only it smells like sweaty gym clothes and dirty socks - intensely. High school enrollment in this tiny independent public school numbers only around 150, so it is possible to pack the entire student body into that hallway and locker room. Because of the smell, teachers have to be very firm in urging students at the head of the line to venture past the door and into the locker room. Otherwise the people at the end of the line, still stuck at the top of the stairs, might get blown away.

By the time I’d scrunched my small self and everybody else down that hallway and into that room, I knew exactly what it feels like to be a styrofoam packing peanut, except that styrofoam packing peanuts don’t scream when somebody turns the lights out for a joke. Neither do they grope each other in the dark. Did anybody bring a flashlight? Of course not.

Last year a tornado actually did rip through this little town. It tore up trees and houses and the football field across the street, but missed the school itself. I was teaching elsewhere at the time.

Standing among 150 teenagers in the dark during the drill, I contemplated the prospect of an actual disaster. Let’s say a tornado really did hit the school, and we were all trapped down in that dark hallway for a day or two or three. No light, no water, just lots of panicked kids and bad smells. I considered meeting any actual tornado at the front door instead - “Come on! Come and get me! I want to fly before I die.”

Either that or I’m buying a battery-operated lantern to keep in my classroom for any actual emergency, so that I can dutifully entomb myself with the rest like a responsible adult human packing peanut.

With disasters of one sort or another in mind, last Wednesday everyone on staff received training regarding the National Incident Management System (NIMS) currently being deployed by the Department of Homeland Security. We were trained so that the school may continue to benefit from funds provided by the federal preparedness assistance program. (Maybe they could buy us flashlights?)

However onerous the process may be, highlights must be noted. One advantage of NIMS, we were told, is that everyone involved in disaster relief will now speak a common language, using common terminology. No police codes will confuse responders. Instead, plain English will be the order of the day.

Thank God. Otherwise, I would never have understood the role of the Incident Command System (ICS) in relation to the Multiagency Coordination Systems (MCS) or the importance of a manageable span of control and relying on an Incident Action Plan (IAP). Nor might I have grasped the differing applications of a Unified Command and an Area Command. Finally, I might not have realized the tremendous importance of the Public Information Officer (PIO) and of operating within the standards of the Joint Information System (JIS) implemented, as it were, through a Joint Information Center (JIC), be that a JIC at the local, state or federal level.

Should an incident occur, the JIS requires that we communicate with our JIC so that the PIO is the only source of information for the public. Otherwise, people might panic or get conflicting information from sources that are not credible, such as firefighters or others on the scene, like me. Informing the public about emergency situations is a job best left to PIOs. We implementers of the JIS are instructed as follows: “Never give any information to anyone. If someone from the media asks you about a situation, say, ‘No comment.’” Emergency management works this way, it seems. (Except when it doesn’t.)

Everyone who receives NIMS training through FEMA, as we did, must demonstrate mastery of the course material by taking a test and receiving a certificate. In our case, we were given the test and told not to write on the answer sheet until we had worked through all the questions and been told all the answers. We did very, very well on this test and took great pride in our scores. We noted that our students might do very well on their tests, too, if only FEMA were administering their training and testing.

My certificate verifying knowledge of NIMS will come soon in the mail, and I will photocopy it and turn it in to the school so that it can be filed in a drawer. Am I ready for a real emergency, you ask? Do I know one more useful thing than I did two weeks ago?

No comment. Please note my certificate and refer your question to a more credible source, a PIO.