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Students learn how to face fire
A friend indeed: Three elementary school students give first aid to a schoolmate who is pretending to have broken her left arm during a fire drill in a school complex in Tambora, West Jakarta, on Thursday
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A friend indeed: Three elementary school students give first aid to a schoolmate who is pretending to have broken her left arm during a fire drill in a school complex in Tambora, West Jakarta, on Thursday. (JP/Indah Setiawati) (JP/Indah Setiawati)
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span class="inline inline-none">A friend indeed: Three elementary school students give first aid to a schoolmate who is pretending to have broken her left arm during a fire drill in a school complex in Tambora, West Jakarta, on Thursday. (JP/Indah Setiawati)
A loud, shrill siren rang five times as a fire broke out in front of a classroom of students on the second floor of a packed elementary school in a fire-prone area in Tambora, West Jakarta.
The school's principal instructed the students to remain calm, evacuate the building and gather in the schoolyard.
Some of the youngsters could not hide their excitement and tried to hurry, but their friends reminded them to stay in line. 'Don't push! One by one! Slow down!' students on the second floor yelled out as they queued to get down the stairs. Their hands were placed on the shoulders of the students in front of them.
Within a few minutes, hundreds of students had gathered at the evacuation point in the schoolyard ' safe and sound.
These students were among 1,180 students from six public elementary schools, SDN Duri Utara 1 through 6, who joined the fire drill that aimed to check their responsiveness in dealing with a fire in their schools.
The fire drill was part of the urban safe-school project, which was initiated by NGO Plan Indonesia in cooperation with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and the Tanggul Bencana Indonesia Foundation.
'We held the fire drill because this area is prone to fires,' project manager Yusra Tebe said.
He said the three-year project was carried out at 22 schools across East and West Jakarta, to instill schoolchildren with the necessary knowledge and skills to respond to fires, floods and earthquakes. The project's team has conducted fire, flood and earthquake drills in each of the 22 schools in the past year.
'We have entered the second year. The first year focused on familiarization, forming a disaster alert team in the schools and making an action plan,' Yusra said.
The fire drill in Tambora was conducted twice on Thursday to accommodate the three sessions in the morning and another three in the afternoon. It also included action by teachers who used simple stretchers to evacuate 'injured' students from the classrooms. Several students also practiced basic first aid to assist a couple of students who pretended to have broken arms and were unconscious.
'This was our first evacuation drill. I am happy to see the students gaining the knowledge and skills to evacuate the building during a fire. In Tambora, fires occur so frequently that they are considered something like an arisan [scheduled communal gathering],' Giri, principal at SDN Duri Utara 3, told The Jakarta Post.
He said he hoped the city's Education Agency would ensure emergency stairwells were included when they built new school buildings, as their two-story building had only one set of stairs.
The densely populated Tambora district is a notorious area for fires, not only because of their frequency but also the difficulty of extinguishing the flames, which often spread quickly.
A total 957 fires occurred across the capital last year, 42 of which were in Tambora.
Some of the students who took part in the drill had experienced real fires first-hand. Ainul Iza, a sixth-grader, said she had learned how to keep herself safe when a fire engulfed her neighbor's house.
'My parents asked me to get out of the house. Fortunately, the fire did not spread to our house,' she said.
Shallu Fidhah Ariyanti, another sixth-grader, said fire scared her, but she had learned how to stay calm in the evacuation drill and lead her classmates to the evacuation point.
'Fires are scary because we can be hurt and lose our belongings, but we should not panic. First, we must save ourselves,' she said after the drill.
Kurnia Hakim, a preparedness program officer at LIPI, said keeping students calm was the first essential step in dealing with a fire at a school.
'The most important thing is to make sure students know how to evacuate and can recognize the threat. Meanwhile, the teachers must have the basic knowledge to handle the situation,' she said.
