Through May 4, the Bainbridge Island School District Parent Teacher Association is hosting a fundraiser to support emergency preparedness.

“Purchases will support all BISD schools and (Parent Teacher Organizations) in their efforts to ensure all classrooms have sufficient emergency supplies,” per the PTA website.

The state Department of Natural Resources released a report in 2021 regarding seismic safety upgrades for schools statewide. Schools were ranked by categories; very high priority, high priority, moderate priority and lower priority.

Two Bainbridge schools, Commodore Options School and Ordway Elementary, were categorized as high priority and deemed to need seismic upgrades, per the report.

“The seismic safety upgrades taking place this summer will provide the necessary structural performance to meet the Tier 1 Life Safety standards,” Dane Fenwick, BISD director of facility operations, wrote in an email.

DNR school seismic safety project lead Travis West described the complexity of building inspections. “Many buildings (including schools) were constructed to older codes that do not adequately address the seismic hazard we now know exists. Thus, geologic and engineering assessments help determine which of those buildings need upgrading,” West wrote in an email.

Bainbridge Prepares, a community organization that started in 2011, aims to bolster community involvement around emergency preparedness with around 750 credentialed volunteers and two paid staff.

“My impetus for starting the group was after hearing too many friends say their emergency plan was to show up at my house” (they were only half joking), BP founder and board chair Scott James wrote in an email. “The only positive answer to that was to encourage the rest of the town to get prepared, using the neighborhood as the sweet spot for action.”

James said that they work with a range of organizations including the city of BI and the BI Fire Department. “We look at disaster preparedness through a lens of love rather than fear. As long as we approach building community resilience with love, we’ll end up with a more enjoyable town to live in, even if the earthquake does not happen in our lifetime,” he said.