SCHOOLS PREP FOR POSSIBILITY OF NUKE ATTACK EVOLVED FROM THE COLD WAR, PLANS ADDRESS DIRTY BOMBS.

Byline: ALEX DOBUZINSKIS Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA -- Five years ago it seemed almost unimaginable, but the Sept. 11 attacks have made the specter of a nuclear attack more real.

And so schools in the Santa Clarita Valley are preparing -- albeit in a low-key way -- for how to protect students if a nuclear bomb exploded in the Los Angeles region.

In the William S. Hart Union High School District, preparedness has not gone much further than circulating a tip sheet using information from the federal government. The school board got the tip sheet last month.

Some of the suggestions could be familiar to generations of Americans who remember the controversial ``duck and cover'' exercises taught in schools at the height of the Cold War. But the tip sheet, which is not used to teach students, also deals with a new topic from the terrorism age -- the ``dirty bomb'' scenario.

``Truly, we don't know what can happen,'' said school board member Gloria Mercado-Fortine. ``I mean 9-11 was certainly a wake-up call.''

Each individual school in the district has a safety plan, including Golden Valley High's plan for ``Nuclear and Radiological Attack.'' An assistant principal at Valencia High said his school has a similar plan.

The Golden Valley High plan presented at last month's school board meeting recommends that, if an attack warning is sounded, school staff should escort students to the main or small gymnasium for protection from the blast.

``If you are caught outside, unable to get inside immediately,'' the tip sheet continues, ``take cover behind anything that might offer protection. Lie flat on the ground and cover your head.''

The federal government's 1950s advice to ``duck and cover'' in a nuclear attack may seem laughably inadequate in the face of a nuclear bomb capable of splintering buildings, and pop culture parodies of ``duck and cover'' abound.

But nuclear expert Charles Ferguson, a fellow for science and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations, said similar advice circulated today is not all bad. Hitting the deck can be a way to at least avoid a nuclear bomb's blinding light.

And the kinds of nuclear weapons terrorists might use would be far less powerful than the Soviet nukes feared during the Cold War, and slightly less powerful than the U.S. bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II, Ferguson said. Millions would likely survive a nuclear blast in compact New York City, and Los Angeles is more spread out, he said.

``The people much farther out, we're talking 20 miles away in your community,'' Ferguson said, ``They're going to be saying, `OK, now what do I do? I sit tight.' They're going to have to be monitoring where the fallout is going, and I think for most communities the safest thing is to sit tight and wait it out.''

The Hart District tip sheet, which comes from a 2002 Federal Emergency Management Agency guideline designed for general public use, recommends using a basement as a fallout shelter if nothing better is available. Fallout radiation loses its intensity rapidly, so the tip sheet foresees survivors hunkering down for anywhere from a day to four weeks.

Les Luxmore, assistant principal at Valencia High, said school staff cannot ``spout word-for-word'' their nuclear attack response. They're more focused on earthquakes, a threat the whole school drills to prepare for once a year, but the school incorporated a nuclear attack plan into its safety blueprint to keep up with the times.

``We really were not told to prepare for it,'' Luxmore said. ``We just took it upon ourselves to say, hey, what are the possibilities in today's world?''

School board member Dennis King said he hasn't spoken to any school principals about their nuclear attack plan. But he said it's good to have one.

``Obviously a nuclear explosion is a possibility,'' he said. ``It's remote but it's possible, and certainly it would be nice to have thought through the process and have some training in all sorts of possible situations that can occur.''

alex.dobuzinskis(at)dailynews.com

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