According to Hassanain (2006:838), school occupants are children and youth who can easily

panic, and become difficult to manage in case of emergencies or crises and damages are
enormous when a school catches fire. The disruption of school operation, psychological damage
to students, families, and teachers after a fire will impair the learning environment. Hassanain
(2006: 839) also maintains that school occupants, mostly untrained children on evacuation drills,
are at a risk of incurring high rate of fatalities and/or injuries in the case of fire mainly because
they may be less able to take the quick action necessary. Pandemic diseases are also seen as a
challenge for Millennium Development Goal 2 for the achievement of universal primary
education. According to a United Nations (2005:11) report, Aids takes a harsh toll on education
whereby the education crisis in sub-Saharan Africa is made worse by the impact of the
epidemics. In 1999 alone, nearly one million children lost their teachers to Aids. When parents
become ill of Aids, children are often pulled out of school to 19 care for them and when parents
die, children often leave school because of economic hardships. Two basic kinds of experiences
that children who live through a disaster might have according to Richardson (s.a:35) include:

(a) The trauma of the disaster event itself: the most obvious experience that children might have
during a disaster is experiencing or witnessing a frightening event or series of events. These
include the destruction of homes, property or personal possessions; being personally injured or
faced with physical danger or witnessing the death, injury or pain of others.

(b) Disruptions to daily life: life might not return to normal quickly following a disaster. There
may be changes in living conditions that cause changes in day-to-day activities, including strains
in the relationships between friends, changes in expectations that family members have for each
other. These disruptions in relationships, roles and routines can be unfamiliar or unpredictable,
which can be unsettling or sometimes frightening for children.

According to Twig (2004:287), the main aims of disaster preparedness is to help people to avoid
impending disaster threats, and to put plans, resources and mechanisms in place to ensure that
those who are affected receive adequate assistance. Numerous scholars such as Briton (1986),
Pijawka and Radwan (1985), Bogand (1989), Welchselgartner (2001) and Alexander (2002)
cited in McEntire (2005:213) agree that the purpose of mitigation and preparedness is to reduce
human vulnerability to disasters through hazard assessments, improved engineering, wiser land
use management, emergency exercises, public education and more