Many questions may arise about evacuation during emergency management planning team meetings and whole community discussions. When and how to evacuate is a common concern for the whole school community, including students, staff, visitors, families, and community partners. This includes, but is not limited to, questions related to how to evacuate individuals with limited mobility, how procedures change depending on the type of threat or hazard, and where to move students, staff, and visitors when routes are unstable. Education agencies should consider these questions and others when developing an Evacuation Annex as a part of their emergency operations plans (EOPs). An Evacuation Annex outlines roles and responsibilities, and courses of action for everyone involved in the process. Maximizing the strength of an education agency’s plans for evacuation is an important part of the work that emergency management teams do at the K-12 and higher ed levels to ensure that loss of life during any emergency is minimized.
Resources from the REMS TA Center, U.S. Department of Education, and Federal agency partners on the topic of evacuation within K-12 schools and institutions of higher education. They are organized based on the before, during, and after phases used to comprehensively manage emergencies.
