{"id":123878,"date":"2019-10-16T23:13:44","date_gmt":"2019-10-17T04:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=123878"},"modified":"2019-10-16T23:13:50","modified_gmt":"2019-10-17T04:13:50","slug":"vwcs-conducts-massive-evacuation-drill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2019\/10\/16\/vwcs-conducts-massive-evacuation-drill\/","title":{"rendered":"VWCS conducts massive evacuation drill"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SCOTT TRUXELL\/<\/strong>independent writer<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By all accounts, Tuesday morning\u2019s state mandated safety drill involving Van Wert City Schools and local emergency responders was a big success. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scenario for the massive evacuation drill was a chemical spill at Ohio 118 and Cooper Road, with the fire department telling district personnel that Van Wert Elementary, Van Wert Middle School, and Van Wert High School on Ohio 118 had to be evacuated as a precaution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Van Wert High School students begin to move to Ohio 118 en route to a place of safety at LifeHouse Church on Fox Road.<\/strong> photos by Dave Mosier\/Van Wert independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we were able to practice today was transferring a large population of students safely from point A to point B,\u201d Assistant Superintendent Bill Clifton said. \u201cWe transferred 1,700 first graders through seniors down the state highway over to LifeHouse Church, a facility that housed all of our students and staff.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the drill, a portion of State Route 118 was closed off to traffic, and Van Wert police and firefighters were present, along with personnel from the Van Wert Post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol, Van Wert County Sheriff\u2019s Office, and Van Wert County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) and Community Emergency Response Team (CERT).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The full-scale exercise, which must be done once every three years, had been in the works for many months, the assistant superintendent said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been drilling our staff and our students on preparing for a crisis in our schools,\u201d Clifton said. \u201cWe\u2019re pretty good at locking down our classrooms — I feel as though we\u2019ve done a very good job of preparing our staff and students for lockdowns, for active shooters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Van Wert high school and middle school students move out onto Ohio 118 as part of a districtwide evacuation drill held Wednesday morning.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019ve not practiced is the most complex part of the safety drill process, and that is transferring large populations of students and staff, and today we were able to do that very successfully,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Superintendent Vicki Brunn said Tuesday\u2019s drill was the only one of its kind in the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat most districts do is just take the kids out to the baseball field and stay on their property, they don\u2019t shut down a highway to move students to safety where they should be if this really happened,\u201d Brunn said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brunn and Clifton thanked all of the agencies involved in the drill, along with the district safety team, building administrators, certified and classified staff members, students, bus drivers, custodians, and LifeHouse Church. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A similar drill involving the Early Childhood Center took place during the afternoon hours. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SCOTT TRUXELL\/independent writer By all accounts, Tuesday morning\u2019s state mandated safety drill involving Van Wert City Schools and local emergency responders was a big success. The scenario for the massive evacuation drill was a chemical spill at Ohio 118 and Cooper Road, with the fire department telling district personnel that Van Wert Elementary, Van Wert […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-01 10:26:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}