Kids help kick off Emergency Preparedness Week
jessica piche
04 May 2010 02:01
Muffins should not be included in a 72-hour emergency kit, say elementary students during an Emergency Preparedness Week kickoff event yesterday morning.
More than 1,000 students and staff from adjacent elementary schools St. Maria Goretti and Hawkwood were joined by emergency services personnel.
Grade 5 students were challenged to put together their own 72-hour emergency kit. The top kits were chosen to be presented during the event.
Hawkwood Elementary students Evan Wheeler, 10, and Blair Jensen, 11, partnered up to create their kit.
"It was really cheesy at first," said Wheeler. "But then we got into it. We went to a safety expo and learned all about plans and went from there."
Grade 5 Hawkwood Elementary student Lily Heshmati, 10, hoped muffins could be a part of her family's kit.
"But we had to take them out because we learned they would rot," she said.
Preparing children for possible disaster situations does not mean scaring them, said St. Maria Goretti principal David Gustavson. The students practise monthly fire drills and two lockdown drills a year.
"They know what to expect, so they respond really well," he said.
Sixteen thousand copies of the Household Emergency Action Plan booklet will be distributed to all students and staff in the public and separate systems by the beginning of May.
