Posted on 03/07/2003 4:47:01 AM PST by JohnHuang2
ASHINGTON, March 6 — The Bush administration is stepping up federal efforts to prepare the nation's schools for possible terrorist strikes and is about to announce a $60 million program to help school districts design response and evacuation plans for emergencies including chemical or biological attacks, administration officials said today.
The officials said the program, which is expected to be made public on Friday by the Departments of Homeland Security and Education, was not meant to suggest that the government believed that schools faced a special threat from terrorists. They said instead that it was an effort to make sure that schools were as well prepared as other public and private places.
A model emergency response plan that is expected to be released by the Education Department encourages schools, public and private alike, to develop a plan that "addresses traditional crises and emergencies such as fires, school shootings and accidents, as well as biological, radiological, chemical and other terrorist activities."
It urges schools to conduct a safety assessment of their buildings, including their proximity "to rail tracks that regularly transport hazardous materials or facilities that produce highly toxic material." The department also has a Web site for planning help: www.ed.gov/emergencyplan.
Officials said the departments of Homeland Security and Education became flooded with telephone calls from anxious school districts after last month's decision to raise the terrorist threat level to "high risk."
"And those anxious calls were a reminder that we need to be sure our schools are prepared for any eventuality," a senior Bush administration official said.
The alert level has since been reduced to "elevated risk," although many officials believe it will return to high risk in the event of a war with Iraq.
The officials said many of the nation's school districts already had wide-ranging emergency response plans, some of them drawn up in response to the shooting rampage at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999. "Because of Columbine, many schools are already much better organized to deal with emergencies than other public institutions in their communities," one official said.
Under the program, school districts will be invited to bid for $30 million in federal grants this year that can be used for emergency training, equipment, and the logistics of preparing emergency response and evacuation plans. The administration is seeking an additional $30 million for the program in the federal budget for the next fiscal year.
Officials said that the money would be directed to poorer schools that have lacked the money and other resources to draw up emergency plans.
"Through initiatives like this, we are achieving our goal of building a more prepared nation — one individual, one neighborhood, one community at a time," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said in a statement prepared for the announcement on Friday.
Education Secretary Rod Paige said in a separate statement: "The midst of a crisis is not the time to start figuring out who ought to do what. At that moment, everyone involved, from top to bottom, should know the drill and know each other."
The National Park Service disclosed today that it, too, was stepping up preparations for the possibility of terrorist attack, and that it would consider closing several important national monuments in the event of a decision to raise the national threat alert to red, or "severe risk" of a terrorist attack.
A spokesman, David Barna, said that while there is not a formal written policy for such an event, the Park Service would probably move to close five of the nation's most popular "icon" tourist sites: the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument, the White House, the St. Louis Gateway Arch and the Liberty Bell pavilion in Philadelphia. The five sites were closed to all visitors for a time after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Bush administration officials have said that they have no plans to go to a red alert, the highest color-coded level, except in a dire emergency. They say that a red alert would probably require a shutdown of many government facilities and severe restrictions on air and rail travel.
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