DSEJ to organize big disaster prevention drills for first time

Kong Ngai

In a first for Macau, the government is planning to organize a large-scale disaster prevention drill in the middle of 2018, head of the Department of the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (DSEJ) Kong Ngai said this week.

The DSEJ, together with the police force, held an explanatory session on disaster prevention works in schools in the Escola Kao Yip, where it informed school representatives from all of the region’s 77 non-tertiary schools, that a drill will take place in May or June, before the end of the 2017/18 academic year. All 77 schools will be included in the drill, according to Kong.

On the sidelines of the explanatory session, Kong said that the “DSEJ has always been working to establish emergency mechanisms with schools. This time, we are just continuing to  enhance them based on Macau’s traditional mechanisms. There will be several new types of disaster occurring [in the future]. In the future, the communication will be bidirectional. The schools will have to communicate with DSEJ.”

“To the best of my knowledge, [regarding] such a big-scale, bidirectional communication mechanism, [in addition to the drills,] which will be organized twice every year, this is the first time [that they are being organized],” Kong confirmed.

Following the first drill, the second is expected to take place in October or November. The program is planned to be continued annually.

According to DSEJ’s explanation, the drills do not necessarily require participation by every single individual in each school.

All 77 schools must organize one drill per semester, and the drills should be mainly related to wind prevention, flooding prevention and fire prevention.

After each drill, schools will have to write a drill evaluation report and deliver it to DSEJ.

The disaster prevention program covers six disaster categories: typhoons, flooding, fires, gas poisoning, nuclear radiation and earthquakes.

In addition to these two drills, the local government has also scheduled an extra ‘pre drill’ for April 28. All 77 schools will participate in it, to be held at the Ha Huan and Coloane district.

Besides the DSEJ, other governmental departments will also join the activity.

Regarding disaster supplies, Kong noted that the government “does not hope schools will store too much food, but that they can store more disaster related materials.”

The drills are expected to allow the schools to be familiar with how to protect themselves in an emergency.