Why Is It Important To Prevent An Emergency Response?

There are four significant priorities that a school needs to ensure during the first thirty minutes of an emergency response. As stated by the National School Public Relations Association, during the “…first 30 minutes of a crisis is crucial in determining people’s perceptions of the crisis and how it was handled...” (New Edition of NSPRA's Crisis Communication Management Manual Now Available, n.d). With this in mind, to begin with, all students, staff, and [genuine] visitors need to be secured and safely taken away from the incident as much as possible. When incidents happen, safety is the number priority.
Once everyone is out of harm’s way, school officials need to dually assist the injured and request assistance from law enforcement and emergency services. Lastly, the school’s crisis team and incident emergency procedures truly come into play. Not everything will go as planned, especially if the crises progressively becomes worse. However, there have to be starting points to help make the transition process a bit smoother and less detrimental than what it would be if there were no plans whatsoever.
There are several special considerations that a school has to take into account before, during, and after an
Everyone needs to know and practice what their roles are, so when an actual emergency happens, they are capable of proceeding with the procedure no matter how stressful a situation will come. Furthermore, parents and media and showing up can create unnecessary messes. Schools need to figure out what they need to do so these do not impact the emergency response. Most importantly, before an incident, schools and districts “…need to open the channels of communication well before a crisis…” (Education, 2007, pp. 1-10). The more knowledgeable people (schools, community, emergency responders, etc.) are in what the plans are, the better people can play their