School District Updates Disaster Plan

If disaster strikes, key employees of the Orange Unified School District would become civil defense workers, and schools would be transformed into shelters capable of sustaining those affected for as long as three days.

Those are some of the details of a highly organized disaster preparedness plan by the district’s child welfare and attendance office. The recently published plan is expected to be adopted by the school board later this month, officials said.

The plan updates the district’s 1988 disaster plan and goes much further, said Frank Boehler, the administrator who coordinated the plan with a panel of psychologists and representatives from the Sheriff’s Department, fire departments, churches, schools and other agencies.

Integration with all other agencies in the community is a key component of the plan and one that was missing from earlier disaster scenarios, Boehler said.

The district joined the statewide Standardized Emergency Management System early this year. SEMS was established in 1993 after buildings burned out of control in the Oakland fire, in part because some fire departments did not have the equipment needed to tap into water supplies.

SEMS describes five emergency management levels that range from the state down to workers in the field. Local agencies must join the system to be eligible for certain funding under state disaster assistance plans.

In Orange Unified, each school site will be able to manage on its own under the plan.

“We’ve returned a lot of decisions to school sites,” Boehler told the school board when he introduced the plan last month. “It’s a local plan.”

Parents will be informed of more details about the plan and designated gathering sites for students in the fall, officials said.