Emergency responses fall into these areas;

• Fire – the alarm would sound and children evacuate the building, assembling on the back field
• Earthquake – stop, drop and cover and then evacuate the building, assembling on the back field. 
• Lockdown – an alarm would sound and children would hide inside. This would be used on rare occasions where threat and danger are high.
  
• Emergency closures - usually weather related like snow, high winds

To ensure that we are well prepared for emergencies, practice evacuations to designated assembly areas are carried out each term. 

In the case of severe weather events such as snow or flooding, the school relies on local radio stations, Facebook, emails, Skool Loop and the school website to notify parents.

Earthquake Procedures

Please find our earthquake and evacuation procedures and information for parents outlined below:

• In the event of an earthquake requiring a ‘drop, cover, hold’ reaction, students will be evacuated outside when it is assessed as safe to do so.
• Standard school evacuation procedures will be followed to ensure all students gather outside and are all accounted for safely and quickly. Once all students are accounted for, the whole school will gather and remain (if possible) in our central evacuation location on the back field. 
• Once we are sure all students are accounted for, our school office will, if possible, send out a bulk communication via email, Skool Loop and Facebook to all families to inform you of the evacuation and that all students are safe. This process may take some time, especially if groups of students are off-site, as we will need to confirm the situation of all students before communicating with families.
• In the case of an emergency, parents must not phone the school or staff, because this will only hold up the process of accounting for all children. See "Communication" section below.
• Parents and caregivers will be asked to pick up students from school if needed. Any students not able to be picked up will be kept with teachers at school until picked up.
• Parents or emergency contacts arriving at school to pick up students will be directed by designated teachers to collection point. Parents must not collect their children without being signed out by class teacher or another designated staff member. 
• We can only release children to their parents or designated emergency contacts, even if the people attempting to pick them up are known to the children. If you need to change your designated emergency contacts, at any time, please contact the office. 
• If the event has caused disruption (such as the city centre being closed down or major traffic disruptions), or there are ongoing aftershocks, we will require all students to be picked up by a parent or designated emergency contact, to ensure that students will be safe and supervised when they get home. Older students who live very close to school and normally walk home alone will, nonetheless, still need to be picked up from school. Please note: we will be taking a “better safe than sorry” approach. There may be occasions when we require children to stay at school and it turns out it was not really necessary. We will make the best judgement call we can based on whatever information we have.

Communication

• In an emergency evacuation, parents or caregivers must not ring the school office or staff, as this can severely congest our school lines and impact our ability to contact emergency services should it be necessary. It can also compromise the safety of children by distracting staff who are carrying out essential emergency procedures. The first priority of staff is to ensure the safety of all students.
• Please note that in an emergency situation, the leadership and admin team will be extremely busy and will be unable to answer phones calls. If it is urgent and necessary to contact the school during an emergency, please leave a text message on 02108914614 (school cellphone)  and staff will endeavour to pick up messages when possible.

• Please be aware that in the event of an earthquake, communications can be disrupted. If you do not hear from us, it may mean that we have been unable to text or email families. In this event we will keep all students safely at school with teachers until they can be picked up. We have supplies of food, water and emergency items to enable us to do this.

• We will not respond to communications seeking information about a particular child unless there are medical or other essential reasons to do so. Our focus needs to be on ensuring the safety of all students and sending out bulk communications to families at the appropriate time. 

• Please be patient as the main priority of staff will be to attend to the safety and needs of students.