Disaster area

[beetiger]

There was a little "parents' night" at Rhys' preschool this evening, a chance to meet the teachers and hear the school's philosophy and review the kids' schedule and tell us how sweet the kids are and such.

A rather large part of the discussion centered around procedures should there be an emergency at Indian Point, our friendly neighborhood nuclear reactor. They handed us forms to fill out telling them whether or not they had permission to give our child potassium iodide.

Apparently the county's idiotic evacuation plan consists of sending buses from about half an hour south to pick up the kids, and then driving them to a school about another 20 minutes away in the other direction. The school plans to call us to get the kids in case of emergency and not use the official plan except if someone gets left behind.

I hate that I have to worry about this kind of thing. I hate that it's a sensible plan to just ignore the government plan. There's an "emergency evacuation" bus stop about a mile and a half from my house, on the route from there to most places. I laugh every time I notice it, because I can't imagine anyone in this suburban commuter town waiting for a bus there, while the sirens were blazing.

They do a test of the evacuation of the big building this preschool uses (not the one Rhys is in, the one where they hold the full-day program) every year, and apparently they can empty the place in 40 seconds. If they can teach Rhys to go anywhere with that kind of efficiency in the next few months, I'll be very impressed.

I need to start working on the chaos in my living room soon. One of the biggest lessons in preschool is how to clean up after yourself and put things away promptly, and I'm just not teaching that one at home right now.

Comments

Pick it up and put it back

[krdbuni.livejournal.com]

I don't think I ever learned that in kindergarten... or elementary school, high school, college, or business. Not to say it might not have been a valuable lesson, but it was just never the focus anywhere. Jessie's and my room looks like a small bomb went off somewhere in its vicinity.

Kristy

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I'm consciously working on that one too. He put away half the books we read together this morning. And his toothbrush.

[Blink]

[orb2069.livejournal.com]

Is this, like, the most likely evacuation threat at his school, or was it brought up because of the tablet forms? Do they really keep enough iodine pills on hand for everybody at the school? Is this really common?

I'm used to tornado warnings, which are on the order of twice a month in season in the Midwest - But get more of the 'Go to the basement and lash yourself to a pipe' type of response.

There's an "emergency evacuation" bus stop... I laugh every time I notice it, because I can't imagine anyone in this suburban commuter town waiting for a bus there, while the sirens were blazing.

And everybody else I know that owns a car says the same sort of things (Usually co-workers talking about various end-of-the-world scenarios) - And
now when I think about it, I get mental images of the road out of New Orleans, all lanes on both sides jammed to a near standstill. I guess it's the result of an individualistic population, or a shitty public transportation situation, or maybe because nobody trusts their government to get it right.

Re: [Blink]

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

Is this, like, the most likely evacuation threat at his school, or was it brought up because of the tablet forms? Do they really keep enough iodine pills on hand for everybody at the school? Is this really common?

It is, actually. We live only 12 miles from the nuclear facility, and it's had safety issues/scares in the past. Not to mention the fact that it would make an excellent terrorist target for the NYC area should that sort of thing ever be happening again.

Yes, they keep enough on hand for everyone at the school. Now, this is a preschool with 10 kids and two adults in it at a time, so that's not really that much.

They did a test of the warning sirens tonight, which hasn't happened in a while. Scared the hell out of me for a second, until we could convince Rhys to come in from the backyard and put on the TV to check.