FIRST RESPONDERS …Two first responders assist a student who was injured in a school bus accident during the full-scale safety drill held on Wednesday, November 12, at Bryan High School.
PHOTOS BY JOHN FRYMAN / THE VILLAGE REPORTER
FIRE DEPARTMENT … Two Bryan Fire Department firemen assist in loading a school bus accident victim into an EMS vehicle during the full-scale safety drill held at Bryan High School.
By: John Fryman
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
john@thevillagereporter.com
In partnership with local law enforcement and the Williams County Emergency Medical Services, Bryan City Schools conducted a full-scale safety drill on Wednesday, November 12, at Bryan High School.
The mandated full-scale safety drill, which was held in the Events parking lot of the high school, also met the state requirements requiring the school district to utilize its safety planning mechanisms with local first responders.
This year’s drill involved a staging of a bus accident with injuries involving a Bryan City School District school bus.
It also included the involvement of several selected student participants who also took part as bus passengers along with the Bryan City Police Department, Bryan Fire Department, Williams County Sheriff’s Department, Williams County Emergency Medical Service, Ohio State Highway Patrol, and the Mercy Health Life Flight Helicopter.
“We had asked them (first responders) to simulate this as if it were a live situation, because we want to give ourselves the best practice available,” said Bryan City Schools superintendent Mark Rairigh.
“They treated it as if it were truly a bus accident. We responded as if we were truly handling a crisis situation.”
Through the efforts of the Bryan City School District, several participants, ranging from elementary to high school students, served as actors for a variety of staged injuries in which first responders performed their respective life-saving procedures after the staged bus accident had occurred.
“The reason we did it in this fashion is called a full-scale safety drill,” said Rairigh. “Through the State of Ohio, every three years we have to go through a rotation of a different style of drill in our school district.”
He explained the rotation of safety drills beginning with year one, a tabletop exercise, where the district conveys its safety drill information via meetings and a review of their safety plans so they can relay the information to district staff and students. The district usually does this in November.
The second year of the rotation is called a functional drill. The school district does a smaller-scale drill within the parameters of the school district while utilizing the district’s safety plans and systems. The district did that last year.
Bryan City Schools had decided to do something different with this year’s full-scale safety drill. Rairigh said the district had experienced some bus accidents and roadway challenges in the past.
“We wanted to make sure our safety systems were functioning appropriately,” said the superintendent. “So, we ran that idea past our police chief (Greg Ruskey) and he thought it was great. That’s how we decided to do this type of safety drill.”
Rairigh pointed out that every school district in Ohio has to go through the three-year safety drill rotation.
“It’s called our emergency management test,” he said. “Now we have to go back and document everything that we did and talk about what went very well and what was strong.
“We also address any weaknesses or challenges that we saw and how we are going to look to improve on those.”
Once the incident occurs, the district is focused on making sure its own communication systems are on the same page as the first responders.
“We have to ensure that the information can flow appropriately between agencies, and it can also flow appropriately in our own school district,” he added. “The drill is really a practice of communication and making sure that every agency knows how the operation would work.”
Rairigh commented that the school district has a chain of command in which they follow in situations such as a school bus accident.
“Within our own internal communication system, we have our hierarchy of chain of communication that we follow,” he said. “From the central office to each building, and what their responsibilities are, and then to our various departments.
The superintendent also credited the district’s transportation department for being a major importance in the drill.
“They were a big help of being able to make sure the State Highway Patrol had seating charts and locations where children were sitting, along with emergency contact information,” said Rairigh.
“We were able to convey information to the buildings as to which parents to contact. We also needed that information for emergency medical services so that we were able to tell the families if they were transported by ambulance or by air ambulance or if they had a minor or a critical injury.”
Rairigh concluded the drill was a huge success. “It allowed us to put our plans into action,” he said. “We also did a debrief session at the end and worked with all of the agencies to look and discover if there are any areas we can improve upon.
“We did note a few areas that we like just to clean up a little bit and to make sure that we’re communicating as efficiently as possible amongst each other.”