CARRABASSETT VALLEY – For only the second time in the United States, the National Association for Pupil Transportation ran a Security Academy on Friday to educate school bus officials on how to handle terrorism and other acts of potential violence.
The workshop was run by Mike Martin, the executive director of NAPT, who said the idea began in large part because of a meeting with federal officials two years ago.
“We went out a couple of years ago and we met with the Transportation Safety Administration at the federal level and they said to us, We view you folks as a pretty grave risk to national security,'” Martin said. “That was an eye-opener for us, and as an outcropping of that we worked with them and said, What do we need to do to make the situation resolve itself?'”
The workshop focused mostly on the assessment and recognition of potential problems and threats, rather than the specific ways of dealing with such issues.
“We don’t tell them what to do, we tell them what to assess,” he said.
However, Martin didn’t wait long to bring up the real-life consequences of a potential attack, beginning the session by showing video of testing done by the NAPT.
The video showed the detonation of a school bus that had 3 pounds of explosives on board. The resulting blast, which nearly destroyed the entire bus, would likely have killed everyone on board, according to Martin.
Although the workshop was planned well before the recent terrorist bombings in London, Martin said that the images and symbolism from those attacks also helped to reinforce the importance of safety and the gravity of the threat.
“If they’re going to attack a red double-decker bus in London, they can just as surely attack a school bus in America,” he said. “It’s a very serious threat, and that really brought it home.”
The Security Academy was designed to help teach bus administrators about those risks, but it is only the first step, according to Martin. The workshop will be held at least four more times around the country, and then the focus will shift to state-by-state education and more direct contact with individual drivers.
Although the Security Academy was the most noteworthy part of the three-day conference, which began on Wednesday at Sugarloaf/USA, it was only one of many workshops and presentations dealing with safety.
George Jones, executive director of the Maine Association for Pupil Transportation, said that tthe Maine association will conduct statewide meetings in fall.
“It’s not just about terror. It can be about pedophilia, it could be about a million things,” warned Jones.
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