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Koblerville school holds bomb threat drill
A bomb threat drill was conducted at the Koblerville Elementary School yesterday, just as a “positive” bomb threat in a school in Guam made headlines and shut down two schools for a day.
According to Jack Diaz, the Public School System’s program manager for Emergency and Crisis Management, Koblerville Elementary was planned to have their drill tomorrow but they moved it up a day to catch the school off guard.
At 1pm, they sounded the alarm signaling for a supposed bomb threat and for the students to go inside the nearest classrooms as per procedures.
“They have to go inside the classroom. They have to be secured in the classrooms, and then the police officers would need to clear their staging area before we get them out and bring them to the staging area,” Diaz said.
Most of the students were outside when the drill started.
“It took some time for the kids to realize that something’s going on,” Diaz said.
He noted that the staging area was too close to the classrooms and they recommended for them to be further from the buildings.
The drill took about 30 minutes.
Diaz said the drill was more of an in-house drill for them to self-evaluate and practice their response. After re-evaluating, they will have a full-on drill with more officers and bomb-sniffing dogs.
“Overall, the school did well,” Diaz said.
According to Education Commissioner Dr. Rita Sablan, there are procedures already in place should a bomb threat—as well as other threats and emergencies, natural and otherwise—happen in a school in the CNMI as it did in Guam.
In Guam, classes were cancelled for Simon Sanchez High School and the adjacent F.B. Leon Guerrero Middle School after a bomb threat and bomb-sniffing dogs had “positive response.”
“For any kind of emergency, there are steps that we must follow,” Sablan said. “Whenever there’s a call that there’s a threat in the school, we certainly have to take precautionary measures.”
