Rainy Days are Here Again: How Should Schools and Workplaces Respond to the Challenge?

According to PAGASA, today’s rainfall was the worst in recent history. I found myself glued to the television for most of the day, watching how flood waters rose and inundated places which no one would have ever imagined. In fact, I was amazed at a photo I came across in my friends blog site (photo was taken from a student’s Facebook profile, I think).  On one hand, I am grateful this disaster happened on a Saturday when there are no classes for most students. I feel for the students who had make-up or laboratory classes and graduate classes today.

This led me to thinking about how schools should respond when weather is this bad. Ideally, it would be nice if classes were suspended early enough to avoid people getting stuck in the middle of a downpour. However, with today’s weather, even when there is no storm signal warning, the flood waters and weird weather gets the better of everybody. Since classes started last June, there already has been a lot of cancellations, many of which coming around noontime, when rains usually get bad.  Not to defend the Department of Education or the weather bureau, I think they are also caught in a quandry. Granted that sometimes some people drop the proverbial “ball”, sometimes they don’t really have a choice.  I mean, if they cancel to early, they get called out for it. Too late, it’s the same thing. As the saying goes, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

For college students,  it’s even worse! Their classes are often the last to be cancelled. Often times, it isn’t till flood waters have risen that suspensions are declared.

As mentioned, school cancellations can be a slippery issue too. As soon as a suspension is declared, parents flock to pick up their children in school, which can also prove to be a challenge. It was interesting to hear how one school schedules the dismissal of the students in increments so as to lessen traffic and attempt some organization in dismissing. On the other hand, some schools do not have such contingency measures. In the university I teach in, it is nice to know that provisions are made for students who find themselves stuck inside campus when these things happen, especially since Taft Avenue is notorious for sudden flooding. I am grateful I have never needed to avail of these provisions myself, but still it is comforting to know.As a teacher in that school, it makes me feel secure that if I have to, I can wait out the storm there and not have to brave the floods where I bet my car would end up just stalling on me. This is usually how it would look by then:

Katipunan Road outside Ateneo, Miriam, near UP

Vito Cruz near DLSU, CSB, SSC

At this point, virtually impossible to make it home safely! What I’ve done on a personal level is pack an emergency kit. I think this would help me especially knowing that my school will allow me to stay in campus overnight if need be. Perhaps offices can do the same.

So now I pose this question: how are your schools/workplaces responding to these kinds of emergencies?

photo taken from www.azraelcoladilla.com.

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