Disaster lessons: children taught to prepare for Bangladesh's killer quakes

By Saad Hammadi

As soon as the school bell rang, Lucky Akhter, 15, dropped down on her knees and took cover under a bench. When a second bell rang, she and 30 other students walked out of the classroom, joining a queue of about 300 students covering their heads with books and bags.

The students at Yearpur high school in Savar, north-west of Dhaka, were practising an earthquake drill prompted by the increasing frequency of tremors in Bangladesh over the past four years.

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In an attempt to avoid large-scale casualties during earthquakes, Dipecho – the disaster preparedness programme of the EU’s humanitarian aid and civil protection operations – has devised a training programme on how to deal with disaster in primary and secondary schools in Bangladesh. Save the Children has been working with the government to implement the training since May 2015.

The move follows major earthquakes that have killed thousands of young people globally when school buildings have been damaged or destroyed.