PARKERSBURG - A national organization suggests West Virginia schools and child-care facilities are unprepared to respond to the needs of children during a disaster.
However, a Wood County administrator said the system is prepared and frequently meets with emergency responders.
"We have plans in place when these things happen," said Lawrence Hasbargen, assistant superintendent for facilities for Wood County Schools.
"The Disaster Decade: Lessons Unlearned for the United States" report released Friday by Save the Children's U.S. Programs said West Virginia doesn't meet the standards it identified: evacuation, relocation, reunification and plans for special needs children at child-care facilities. Schools also do not have multi-hazard plans, the organization said.
"We wouldn't send children out of the schools," Hasbargen said. "They would stay until they can be (reunited) with their parents."
Man-made disasters can't be ruled out in the post 9-11 world and much was learned 15 years ago when the Shell Plant in Belpre exploded, he said.
Blennerhassett elementary and middle schools are across the river from the plant. Officials feared a more powerful explosion could have started a chain reaction and caused explosions at adjacent plants, including DuPont and the former G.E. Plastics in Wood County.
Hasbargen said he and Superintendent of Schools Bill Niday were administrators at Blennerhassett at the time.
"We knew in advance where we were going to move those children had that disaster continued," he said.
Save the Children is pushing for federal action to establish national disaster preparedness standards for child-care centers and schools and an Office of Children's Advocacy at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, make child-care centers eligible for federal disaster aid so they quickly rebuild and restore services, a public awareness campaign about protecting children during disasters and a commission to study how the recession is affecting children.
"The past decade is defined by unrelenting and unprecedented disasters that left children unprotected in schools and child care," said Mark Shriver, Save the Children U.S. Programs managing director. "The most vulnerable Americans in the most vulnerable settings are made more vulnerable because of government inaction."
The reaction from Ed Hupp, director of emergency services in Wood County, was one of incredulity.
School children would not have been forgotten in any disaster planning, he said.
"We even got plans to take care of animals," Hupp said.
Hupp cited the Red Cross. The agency has a system in place where people can register their whereabouts in a disaster, said Katy Sulfridge.