Minute-by-minute updates, buses on standby; schools calm panic-struck parents amid bomb threat
bomb threat to giving minute-by-minute updates to parents about their wards, schools in Delhi-NCR took several measures on Wednesday to ensure that there was no panic-like situation due to a hoax e-mail received by them. Several schools said they were able to carry out a swift evacuation of the students and staff, but dealing with the parents was a challenge.
Some schools said they plan to issue a circular for parents, outlining the standard operating procedure to guide them on how to react in adverse situations like these.
«We hold frequent evacuation drills to prepare students for situations like an earthquake or other natural calamities. So handling the students was not a problem as our children are trained on how to react during such situations. It was the parents who panicked and were difficult to manage,» Sudha Acharya, principal, ITL Public School, said.
Acharya, who is also the head of the National Progressive Schools Conference, a body of 250 private schools under its umbrella, said the schools were quick in alerting police after receiving the bomb threat through an e-mail and buses were readied to drop students safely to their homes, while others were handed over to their parents waiting outside the school gate.
A special message was sent to the parents, assuring them that their children were safe and requesting them to stay calm.
«We knew it was a hoax given the language of the e-mail and the unlikelihood of more than 100 schools receiving the same e-mail at the same time. However, we followed the
