The absence of the tradition of fire-fighting naturally led to a string of blazing disasters. Al-Ahram Weekly investigates For fear of tragedy Enjy El-Naggar discovers Egyptian schools are far from ready to handle any kind of disaster On a quiet evening, Tamer Mohamed, a 35-year-old Arabic teacher at the state-run Future Language School, was home watching TV. He came across a documentary on Al-Jazeera satellite channel, showing how Japanese students behave when earthquakes strike. At that moment, he realised his school faces a serious problem: none of the students know how to behave in case of fire or any other disaster. Mohamed took it upon himself to training his students on how to deal with disaster, with the help and support of other school staff. Being head of the Crisis and Disasters Committee of the school -- a branch established by the Ministry of Education at schools after the devastating earthquake that hit Egypt in October 1992 -- helped him to put his idea into practice. "I taught my students how to deal with fire if it breaks out during the day. What happens during our training sessions is that first, I set off a fire alarm-like sound -- seeing as we don't have real fire alarms at our school -- and then students and teachers start to leave the school in an organised way," he explained. Mohamed has managed to get hundreds of students to evacuate the school within 58 seconds from the moment they hear the alarm signalling disaster, be it fire or an earthquake. He also taught them how to use a fire extinguisher and how to put out fire in case there are no supervisors present. Mohamed's personal initiative has earned him the Model Cairo Teacher award offered by the Ministry of Education in 2004. Though Mohamed's idea did not cost him or the school much time or money, it was difficult for an adjacent state-run school, Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, to simulate his idea. Packed with more than 1,000 students, the school's crumbling facilities were telling of the potential dangers looming in the event of fire or another disaster. Having elbowed my way through crowds of students to find someone to talk to, I finally met the headmaster. "You can see how bad conditions are here. How do you expect us to have a fire extinguisher or a fire alarm?" wondered the headmaster, who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly on condition of anonymity. "The school's budget is much too limited to buy such devices." Mohamed's is not the only voice to have been raised. Khairiya Ismail, headmistress of a government-run school and former head of the Crisis and Disasters Committee, sent many complaints to the Civil Defence Department (CDD) asking for the fire hoses at her school to be fixed. Qout El-Qolub Ghali, headmistress of Ali Ibn Abi Taleb school, complained about the same issue. But neither of their complaints was dealt with seriously by the CDD. On the brighter side, a permanent committee from the Ministry of Education pays frequent visits to schools to inspect the Crisis and Disasters Committees and to check the expiry date of fire extinguishers and whether or not they are properly charged. If any kind of negligence is detected, the headmaster and director of the educational department at the offending school are immediately penalised, according to many headmasters. But the question remains: how can it be that this committee is duly enforcing its rules if there are schools that either don't have fire extinguishers at all, or whose staff and students lack the know- how to make them useful? "Two headmasters paid a LE6,000 fine each because the inspection committee from the ministry didn't find fire extinguishers at their schools," said Ghali. Meanwhile, Ghali agrees with Mohamed that, as they stand, the Crisis and Disasters Committees are ineffective, for their trainers have no idea about managing crisis when it happens. Limited budgets and/or a severe lack in know- how are always the two obstacles facing tens of thousands of state-run schools, which constitute the majority of schools in Egypt. So, if fire erupts for any reason, the end result is likely to be riddled with chaos and even casualties. The real disaster may not be fire or other similar types of catastrophe, but one which is completely avoidable, and that is ignorance. Meanwhile, when it comes to international schools operating in Egypt, the picture is completely different. Lilian Mohamed Abdel-Azim, spokesperson and deputy of chairman of a chain of international schools, said that the schools she represents follow a set of instructions to train students on fire drills, starting from kindergarten through to secondary school. "The school hires a number of specialists and gives them the necessary tools to implement these instructions, while educating teachers on how to convey all information related to dealing with crises to students," she said. Most headmasters and teachers interviewed by the Weekly agreed that there should be a separate department at schools managed by specialised trainers to deal with disasters efficiently. "The main role of these specialised trainers is to teach students and teachers how to deal with disasters, instead of just depending on teachers to do so, as they have no time to manage this section or even talk to students," Ghali said. She stressed that it is hard to dedicate time to teaching students how to deal with this kind of problem. "And if they are going to do that, they need financial support," she added. Note too, that according to many headmasters, secondary school students simply don't, as a general rule, have an interest in listening to or being trained in crisis management because their main goal is to learn their academic lessons, which makes the committees' mission all the more difficult. "If we need to establish a new section for crisis management, we should start with primary students as they have the desire to learn, and will not forget any piece of information they receive," the headmistress believes. Her idea, perhaps, is a good solution, given that Mohamed's initiative came to a halt when he stopped getting support from teachers and headmasters. "The idea just struck them as strange," said Mohamed. "They think it's hard to imple
