Evacuation Chairs Australia

If an earthquake strikes or a fire blazes through a school building, Palm Springs Unified School District officials want to be prepared to handle the situation.

With a grant of around $160,000, awarded by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, district leaders plan to to train employees in emergency preparedness.

"Every school has to be aware for (emergencies) and plan for that," said Roy Hill, manager of the district's security and emergency preparedness programs.

The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools started awarding these types of grants in October 2003 to help prepare school districts for any emergency or crisis. This year, Palm Springs Unified and Coachella Valley Unified school districts were among 92 school districts across the country to receive the federal grants.

Hill, who wrote the grant, said the money will be used toward training programs to handle emergencies.

One includes the School Emergency Response team program, in which four employees from each school site will receive training for a number of emergencies such as light firefighting, search and rescue, and first aid.

Administrators at individual schools will also be trained to assess a building's security and vulnerability, Hill said. They may look for extra doors that should not be open and other things that make a school vulnerable.

Possible uses of the grant funds include:

• training classes for all school sites in basic emergency preparedness;

• purchasing evacuation chairs to help evacuate non-ambulatory students and staff from multistory buildings;

• creating bilingual emergency preparedness brochures and fliers for distribution at school sites and parent/teacher programs;

• developing an online educational/informational module to provide training to parents, community members and students about the district's