The Pacific Grove Fire Department has a special program of disaster preparedness for children in our elementary schools. The program uses earthquakes and fires as illustrative examples for teaching kindergartners, first, and seconds graders the basic principles of disaster preparedness. The parents get involved because the fire department gives earthquake literature to the children to take home along with a letter asking the parents to read and discuss preparedness with their children. Earthquakes, for example, may be frightening for both children and adults, but being prepared both physically and mentally should help in reduction of fears.

A specially designed teaching tool is used for this disaster preparedness program. The Fire Department has an earthquake and fire safety trailer which it takes to an elementary school. The trailer looks like a two story House (built to the scale of the height of an average six-year old child). A group of ten children, accompanied by a fireman instructor, go into the downstairs living room and listen to a talk on earthquake safety in the home. They learn why bookcases and hot water heaters should be bolted to the wall studs, how to run and tell their mother if the fireplace screen were to fall over while there was a fire in the fireplace, etc. The children take turns practicing telephoning 9-1-1 to report a pretend emergency (actually, a second fireman instructor in the control room of the trailer answers and asks them the same questions a real 9-1-1 operator would ask).

In order to involve the parents, the children are given appropriate earthquake and fire safety literature to take home with a note asking the parents to read and discuss preparedness with them. The children also take home a letter inviting the parents to take a free six-week neighborhood emergency response team training program. This program teaches earthquake preparedness in the home, how to keep people injured in an earthquake from bleeding to death, firefighting and how to rescue earthquake victims.

Junior high school students may study science courses developed with National Science Foundation support which use disasters. For example, students study hurricanes as an introduction to meteorology. Senior high school students are invited to take training and join neighborhood emergency response teams along with their parents.