{"id":17923,"date":"2026-09-22T04:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T04:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/?p=17923"},"modified":"2026-09-28T06:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T06:25:08","slug":"disaster-preparedness-in-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/disaster-preparedness-in-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Disaster Preparedness Must Start in Schools?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Key takeaways<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Disaster Preparedness should begin in the classroom: <\/strong>Disaster risk education should be integrated into the curriculum rather than treated as an occasional activity.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Teachers need practical training:<\/strong> Teachers should know how to manage evacuation, first aid, communication and children&#8217;s emotional needs during emergencies.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Children can become preparedness leaders:<\/strong> Older students can take responsibility through disaster-awareness clubs, peer education and leadership activities.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Schools can strengthen entire communities:<\/strong> Preparedness can extend beyond students to parents and surrounding communities, multiplying the school&#8217;s impact.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Resilience includes emotional recovery:<\/strong> Psychosocial support and continuity of education are essential parts of helping children recover after a disaster.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"590\" height=\"443\" src=\"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/donate-for-disaster-relief-1.webp\" alt=\"Disability-inclusive disaster preparedness\" class=\"wp-image-17528\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/donate-for-disaster-relief-1.webp 590w, https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/donate-for-disaster-relief-1-300x225.webp 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 590px) 100vw, 590px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s a normal school day. A teacher is midway through a maths lesson when the ground begins to shake, or someone smells smoke down the corridor. In that moment, what happens next depends entirely on whether the teacher and the students were prepared for what was happening. Was there a plan? Did anyone rehearse it? Did the children know where to go?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>India cannot afford to leave this to chance. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.unicef.org\/india\/what-we-do\/disaster-risk-reduction\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twenty-seven of its 29 states and 7 union territories<\/a> sit in the path of natural hazards, and disasters have displaced over half a million people internally in recent years. Globally, the UN estimates that more than a billion children have had their education disrupted by disasters since the turn of the century, with tens of thousands of schools damaged or destroyed along the way. This data describes the everyday risk that Indian classrooms live with, often without quite realising it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The argument here is simple: disaster preparedness begins with a curriculum, a trained teacher, and a school that treats readiness as routine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Schools Are the Infrastructure We Keep Overlooking<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Ask most people what keeps a community safe during a disaster, and they&#8217;ll mention the fire brigade, the police, perhaps the local municipal office. Few think of the school down the road. Yet schools are already doing half the job community resilience requires. Schools gather people daily, they employ adults trained to manage and teach groups, and they hold the trust of parents in a way few institutions can match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Donate for Assam Floods <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/donation\/disaster-relief\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/donation\/disaster-relief\">here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Research bears this out. A recent systematic review of school-based disaster management found that schools can meaningfully contribute to every stage of the disaster cycle: prevention, disaster preparedness, response and recovery, not merely the one annual fire drill most of us remember from our own schooldays. And yet, the same review found that schools remain chronically underused in this role, treated as sites to be protected rather than institutions capable of protecting others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s a wasted opportunity, and in a country as disaster-prone as India, an expensive one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The Gap Between What&#8217;s Promised and What&#8217;s Practised<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In most schools, drills happen once a year, often as a formality rather than a genuine test of readiness. There&#8217;s no real framework for tracking which students have been affected by a crisis, no clear protocol for keeping their education going once the immediate danger has passed, and even less guidance for events that don&#8217;t fit the standard &#8220;natural disaster&#8221; mould, such as communal violence or forced displacement, for instance, which uproot families just as brutally as any flood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part of the problem is structural. Much of the global evidence base on school disaster preparedness management comes from wealthier countries, leaving a gap in models suited to India&#8217;s scale and diversity. Add to that the usual constraints of tight budgets, patchy communication systems, and an absence of binding regulation, and it becomes clear why preparedness so often stays on paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>What Genuine Disaster Preparedness Actually Looks Like<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.undp.org\/asia-pacific\/blog\/meet-kenit-third-grader-promoting-tsunami-preparedness-india\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">B. Kenit, a student in the third grade, living<\/a> in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, attended a tsunami evacuation drill held in his school. It was part of a\u00a0UNDP-Government of Japan \u2018Tsunami Project\u2019\u00a0aimed at strengthening school disaster preparedness to tsunamis in several countries in the Asia-Pacific region. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He says, <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cI realized that if I did nothing, I would continue to be frightened by the threat of a tsunami. I stood up to protect my parents, school friends, neighbours&#8230;everyone I care about.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2011, the lives of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.undrr.org\/news\/school-tsunami-risk-draws-crowds\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">320 people in the Japanese city of Sendai&nbsp;<\/a>were saved when they sought shelter at a disaster-resilient school ahead of an incoming tsunami wave.&nbsp;This kind of <a href=\"http:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/articleshow\/126674533.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&amp;utm_medium=text&amp;utm_campaign=cppst\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">approach requires doing a few things properly and consistently.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Disaster preparedness education needs to sit inside the regular curriculum, not bolted on as an occasional assembly topic. Children should understand the specific risks their region faces and know, in practical terms, how to respond.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Skills like basic first aid, safe evacuation (for fire, flood or earthquake), and how to spot an early warning sign are the abilities that turn panic into action. Further, identifying safe spots and trusted adults, recognising alarms and signals, leadership roles for bigger students, and crowd management, are all skills that are a must in the curriculum.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Schools should function as a multiplier, not an island. When a school trains its students, it can just as easily extend that training to parents and the surrounding neighbourhood, turning one institution&#8217;s preparedness into a community&#8217;s. After Assam&#8217;s floods, the state disaster authority worked with UNICEF to distribute learning kits designed to keep children&#8217;s education going even mid-crisis, which is a small but telling example of what&#8217;s possible when readiness is built in beforehand rather than improvised afterwards.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Develop an age-appropriate disaster curriculum for each grade level to help children understand and respond to the risks they face. This can include engaging learning materials and activities, such as cartoons, comics, competitions, and film screenings, all aimed at educating children about disaster risks.\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Train the senior children to lead and take responsibility. They can help when a disaster strikes, and on normal school days they should be given opportunities to set up disaster awareness and reduction clubs or committees in schools. Such clubs can organise events and workshops in partnership with organisations that work on disaster management, to help create awareness on disaster risk management.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Finally, emotional preparedness deserves as much attention as physical safety. Counselling and psychosocial support determine whether a child recovers or carries that trauma silently for years.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The Policy India Actually Needs<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/IMG_6100-1536x1024-1-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"Smile\u2019s disaster response team distributing relief material to affected families in Assam\" class=\"wp-image-1013\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/IMG_6100-1536x1024-1-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/IMG_6100-1536x1024-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/IMG_6100-1536x1024-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/IMG_6100-1536x1024-1.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Smile\u2019s disaster response team distributing relief material to affected families in Assam<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>None of this scales without institutional backing. Disaster preparedness education needs a formal place in national and state curricula, mandated through the Ministry of Education rather than left to the goodwill of individual principals. Funding has to be sustained, not a one-off grant after the last disaster makes headlines, particularly for schools in India&#8217;s most exposed and least-resourced regions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Equally, no single framework will fit a country this vast. What works in flood-prone Assam won&#8217;t necessarily suit earthquake-prone Uttarakhand or cyclone-battered Odisha. The smarter approach is a national minimum standard, flexible enough to be shaped by local risk and local knowledge, with schools, families, NGOs and district authorities all pulling in the same direction instead of working in isolation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Picture that normal school day again. The ground shakes, or the smoke drifts down the hallway, but this time, the teacher is following a plan the whole school trusts. The children know exactly what to do, because they&#8217;ve done it before as something rehearsed and understood.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>PDF- Role of schools in disaster risk management: A systematic review, BMC Emergency Medicine, Ameneh Marzban, Mohsen Dowlati, Shandiz Moslehi and Milad Ahmadi Marzaleh<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gfdrr.org\/en\/safer-schools\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.gfdrr.org\/en\/safer-schools<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-nfsi wp-block-embed-nfsi\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"aBsYMdzNNo\"><a href=\"https:\/\/nfsi.in\/disaster-preparedness-why-it-starts-with-education\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Disaster Preparedness: Why It Starts with Education<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; visibility: hidden;\" title=\"&#8220;Disaster Preparedness: Why It Starts with Education&#8221; &#8212; NFSI\" src=\"https:\/\/nfsi.in\/disaster-preparedness-why-it-starts-with-education\/embed\/#?secret=o6xkrfRPNv#?secret=aBsYMdzNNo\" data-secret=\"aBsYMdzNNo\" width=\"580\" height=\"327\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/articleshow\/126674533.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&amp;utm_medium=text&amp;utm_campaign=cppst\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/articleshow\/126674533.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&amp;utm_medium=text&amp;utm_campaign=cppst<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>India&#8217;s schools sit at the heart of communities that face floods, cyclones, earthquakes and other emergencies. But disaster preparedness is often treated as an annual drill and not as a skill children and teachers practise throughout the year. This blog explores how schools can turn disaster education into everyday preparedness, equipping students, teachers and communities to respond with confidence when emergencies strike.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":8916,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,10],"tags":[1236],"class_list":["post-17923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-disaster-relief","category-insights","tag-disasterpreparedness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17923"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17942,"href":"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17923\/revisions\/17942"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smilefoundationindia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}