Disaster response to become part of HCMC curriculum Students participate in an emergency response drill at Nguyen Binh Khiem Elementary School in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City. Tuoi Tre Ho Chi Minh City educators are planning to make disaster response part of the official curriculum at local schools after rainwater inundated city streets in one of the worst flashfloods recorded in recent years earlier this month. Knowledge of natural disaster prevention and relief will be integrated into school subjects like physics, chemistry, biology, geography and technology, according to Tran Thi Kim Thanh, deputy director of the municipal Department of Education and Training. City students will also be taught how to behave in emergency cases in addition to safety standards at school.  Educational institutions will be asked to organize extra-curricular activities dedicated to disaster relief and response to climate change. More specific instructions will be issued to schools, Thanh said. Local schools just finished drills in which they were required to make preparations for simulated disasters and effectively cope with emergencies. Middle and high schools in several districts, including the more central ones, have trained their students to deal with extreme scenarios like explosions, earthquakes, and sea storms for several years. City streets were heavily flooded on November 7 when it rained cats and dogs in many districts from the small hours until 7:00 or 8:00 am, and thus forced many schools to close down. A day earlier municipal authorities required all schools to shut down and let students go home early as the city braced for a fierce storm, forecast to be formed from a tropical low pressure that could carry strong winds blowing between 62 and 88 kilometers per hour. No such a storm, except heavy rain, hit the city after that. Following that, city people trembled at the possibility of Typhoon Haiyan making landfall in Vietnam. The storm, said to be the most powerful on recent record, then swept along the coast in central Vietnam and claimed dozens of lives after killing more than 5,000 people in the Philippines. TUOI TRE