Safety at Creek
Lockdown, lockout, evacuate, shelter. Everyone knows how seriously these drills are taken at Silver Creek High School, and the importance of doing these drills efficiently and safely is stressed by every faculty member. Fire drills are conducted every month of the school year and students are assigned to a specific route to take out to the football field with their class, while their teachers lock the doors behind them. A select few office members are assigned a wing of the school, where they check to make sure students and teachers have safely exited the building and all the doors are locked. In a real emergency, the fire department would check if the building is safe to enter, or if further instruction is needed.Tornado drills are practiced twice in one school year, when students and teachers leave their classrooms indefinitely, to sit in the locker rooms, hallways, or any place that would provide protection from a tornado. Evacuation drills happen once every three years, when the entire school is evacuated and every person is sent to Altona Middle School, and waits for further instruction. Reasons for an evacuation could include, a bomb threat if the location of the bomb was unknown, or if a student had a weapon, and they couldn’t find the student. The state requires lockdown drills to be practiced twice a year, when teachers are instructed to lock the doors, turn off the lights and close the blinds. Students and teachers must stay out of sight. Lockout drills happen once a school year when teachers lock the doors and close the blinds but still continue to teach.
These drills are state mandated, and the amount of times some of these drills are practiced, differs from state to state, depending on the likelihood of them happening. These drills are practiced to better prepare students and staff for real, life threatening situations. If everyone knows what to do in one of these scenarios, then the chance of someone getting hurt is drastically lower than if students and staff were unprepared. A Sophomore from Silver Creek, Jayda Jennings, explains, “The drills are super important. Without them, everybody would be lost if there actually was a fire or a lockdown. You never know what could happen, or when it could happen.” Jennings believes in the effectiveness of doing these drills, but also thinks that some students could still take them more seriously. Students know their role in each of these drills, but administration can sometimes play a different role. In the case of a fire drill, Mary Aragon-Vigil, the campus supervisor, says ¨My job is making sure all of the kids are out of the building.” As well as this, Mary also checks to make sure every door is locked in her assigned wing to ensure the room is clear. After all the wings are clear, Mary also checks to make sure every teacher has made it out of the building. She looks for any red cards being held up by teachers. The red card indicates that they are missing a student, or they have a student that needs medical attention. Mary believes the school should create a scenario where a pretend fire is in one part of the building, blocking certain exits. Then have teachers and students react to this change, to ensure that if this were to happen, everyone would still get out safely.
Elizabeth Hardegree and Kaitlynn Garcia