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n light of potential natural disasters countrywide and specifically in West Java province, the provincial administration plans to prioritize disaster preparedness materials in schools to educate students on disaster mitigation and other knowledge.

The materials would be included in local content or extracurricular activities such as Teenage Red Cross or the Indonesia Scouts, West Java Education Agency head Asep Hilman said on Monday.

“Knowledge on disaster mitigation is important because we never know when disasters come,” Asep said on Monday.

The materials on disaster preparedness could start with mapping a region based on its disaster potential and actions that students and teachers could take in a disaster. It would also include plans for making school environments safe from disasters, Asep said.

The agency would prepare the materials following the transfer of middle school management from cities and regencies to the provincial administration by 2017, as stipulated in the 2014 law on regional administrations, which places education under the responsibility of provincial administrations.

Meanwhile, the West Java Disaster Mitigation Agency’s (BPBD) prevention and preparedness division head, Dani Herdiana, said disaster-safe schools were important to fulfill children’s right to safety while studying.

Past experiences, such as a 2009 earthquake in Padang, West Sumatra, had illustrated the dangers as 241 schools were damaged and 60 students were killed at schools. Usually, more people fell victim during rescue efforts, he added.

“In other words, victims were not directly claimed by the disaster but while they were avoiding the disaster, which they were not familiar with or that they had no mitigation concepts about,” Dani said.

With regard to disasters in West Java, Dani said the province of 45 million people had the highest disaster potential in the country.

The National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) in 2011 released a disaster prone index, which ranked Garut regency in the top position in terms of disaster vulnerability out of 494 regencies across Indonesia.

Apart from landslides, floods, droughts and earthquakes, Garut also has the potential to experience a tsunami from the Indian Ocean. A flash flood that hit Garut in mid-September claimed at least 27 lives.

Education and disaster risk reduction should become part of mass learning in the long term and should also be interactive, Dani said.

“Disaster risk reduction education is aimed at creating values and attitudes of humanity, care for disaster risks and understanding of disaster risks, both physically and socially,” he said.