Spanish schools to teach pupils how to cope with climate crisis disasters | Spain

Spanish children will learn to respond to floods, forest fires, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in a desire to prepare them for the growing impact of climate emergency.

The plan was unveiled Thursday after a summer of forest fires killed four people and less than a year after the catastrophic floods claimed the lives of more than 220 lives in the oriental regions of the country.

According to the Ministry of Education, the objective is to provide schools with a whole which confers “the knowledge, skills, attitudes and the necessary values ​​necessary to deal with emergency situations in a safe and effective manner”. In addition to the dangers and natural disasters, it will cover chemical, industrial and nuclear accidents and those linked to the transport of dangerous materials.

More than 8 million children in 25,000 schools will receive compulsory training, which will be provided using videos, infographics and other media. Students of infants and primary schools will receive a minimum of two hours of lessons, while older children will receive at least four hours. The autonomous regions of Spain will be able to adapt the training to the various risks that they face.

“The children of schoolchildren aged three, four and five will learn to recognize an alarm and identify the first signs of danger, as well as basic security principles,” the ministry said in a statement. “Older children will learn to look for high land in a flood and shelter under an office if the earth begins to tremble.”

He said that students would also learn “the differences between information and disinformation in emergency situations”.

Speaking during the launch of the program in a school in the city in the center-East of Cuenca, the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, said that the objective was to prepare children and young people to respond as well as possible for situations “which are clearly aggravated by the climate urgency”.

The lessons, which will start this school year, are one of the measures presented in a 10 -point plan to protect a front line country from climate change.

“If we do not want to bequeath our children a gray Spain of fire and flames, or a brown Spain of the floods, then we need a greener Spain,” said Sánchez on September 1.

The Prime Minister calls on the political class and the public of Spain to unite for what he calls a “great state pact” to combat the climate crisis.

“Let us leave the ideological problems on the one hand and listen to reason, science and common sense,” he said on Thursday, adding that there was an urgent need for common sense policies to deal with emergencies and the fight against climate change “.

But his calls were rejected by the Party of the Conservative People of the Opposition, which accused Sánchez and his government of not protecting the Spaniards and their property against forest fires.

“State pacts do not turn out the flames, and they also do not restore what was lost,” said a spokesperson for the PP last month.