Ensure safety at mock drills
The shocking death of a college student during a mock fire drill at a Coimbatore college last week points to the sheer carelessness of the educational institution in allowing such a crude and reckless exercise at the cost of students’ lives. First and foremost, before agreeing to the mock drill, the college should have questioned the trainer on the precautions that would be taken to ensure the safety of students. The college should have checked on the procedure involved in holding an exercise of that sort, which would have led them to seeking proper permission from the district authorities and they would have also probably known that the trainer was not authorised by the National Disaster Management Authority(ndma) to conduct the drill. The college obviously did not do any of these basic checks and placed blind faith in the trainer, putting the students at risk. It must be held accountable for the death of the girl.
Even when the mock drill started, I wonder if the college authorities were present to supervise the exercise and ensure the safety of the students. . If they were, they would have immediately put stop to such a dangerous exercise, devoid of safety measures. The video footage shows the girl being asked to jump from the second floor ledge without any safety harness. To prevent the fall from turning fatal, there are no trained personnel holding the safety net, but untrained students who may well drop it when the weight of a person falls on it from that height.
Given this state of affairs, the 19-year old girl obviously got scared and was not willing to jump. Here again, if any responsi- ble person from the college was overseeing the drill, he or she would have immediately ensured the girl was not part of the dangerous drill. Obviously there was no one to rescue the girl, while she was literally pushed to her death by the trainer. There is a vast difference between someone jumping on to a net and someone being pushed down. The trainer’s push resulted in the girl falling straight down and hitting her head on the ledge below.
This reminds me of the death of a young employee of a garment factory in Bengaluru in 2012 during a mock fire drill conducted by the fire service department-–the harness (a fireman’s chair knot) had snapped while she was coming down the third floor and she had fallen to her death because there was no safety net below. Promising to mend their ways, the fire service admitted after the tragedy they did not have a standard operating procedure (SOP) for such drills and they conducted them without a safety net.
Mock fire drills are necessary and today such drills are being conducted in educational institutions to ensure students do not become victims of disasters. But to prevent such exercise itself turning into a disaster, one needs to ensure they are carefully planned and executed with utmost care, with all safety precautions in place to prevent any untoward incident. And the NDMA has an important role in ensuring that .
The SOP for mock exercises needs to elaborate on all the safety measures required to be followed while conducting such drills and this has to be strictly adhered to by all. It should also be circulated to all education institutions. It is also important to familiarise schools and colleges about the permissions required to be taken before holding such drills. Educational institutions on their part need to realise that the safety of the students is their responsibility.