After a summer filled with wildfire smoke and evacuation orders and alerts, the Board Chair for the Kamloops-Thompson School District says there is a plan in place, in the event of an emergency.

Rhonda Kershaw says an increased number of buses will be put on standby while students are in school in a community that is on evacuation alert. She used Barriere as an example, saying there aren’t enough buses in that community to evacuate students if they are all in school when the order comes in.

“If a school or community goes on alert, sometimes those alerts can stretch on, and we wanted those students to be able to – if their families choose – to be able to attend school and not have that interruption,” she said, on NL Newsday.

“So what would happen is that if a community was on alert, increased buses would be on standby while students were in school so that if something happens, we can evacuate quickly.”

Kershaw says while the policy was put in place because of wildfires, it will be used for any evacuations brought on by floods or other disasters.

“Any of our rural communities particularly, we would see it,” she added. “We would actually enact this, I think, even if we had some of our further outlying City of Kamloops schools. RL Clemitson is one where we might have to have buses on the ready on a moments notice, if we have to evacuate a school.”

Kershaw also says teachers will be told to not schedule strenuous outdoor activities if it gets too smoky and the air-quality index crosses a seven or high.