Daycare Emergency Preparedness in Indonesia: A Practical Guide

Why Does Your Daycare Need an Emergency Plan?

An earthquake does not announce itself. Indonesia sits on the Ring of Fire, so gempa is a fact of the country rather than a rare event, and the rainy season brings banjir to low-lying parts of many cities every year.

A fire can start in any building. For a centre full of children too young to evacuate themselves, the difference between a frightening moment and a tragedy is whether the adults already knew what to do before it happened.

An emergency plan is that preparation written down. It is not a document you file once to satisfy an inspector and never open again. It is a small set of decisions, where the children go, who counts them, who calls the parents, made calmly in advance so that nobody is improvising while the ground is still moving or the smoke is rising.

Indonesia has a national framework for exactly this. SPAB, which stands for Satuan Pendidikan Aman Bencana, was established under Permendikbud No. 33/2019 and sets out how education units, including PAUD and TK, should prepare for disasters. Aligning your plan to it gives you a recognised structure to build on, and it answers the plain question a parent or a Dinas Pendidikan visitor may one day ask, which is whether your centre has a real plan at all.

What Must a Daycare Emergency Plan Include?

A useful plan is specific to your building and short enough that a new caregiver can read it on their first morning. A forty-page binder nobody opens protects no one. Start from the hazards you actually face, which for most Indonesian centres means earthquake and fire everywhere, and flood if you are in a low-lying area, then write the immediate response for each one.

The plan then needs the evacuation route and the assembly point, the named roles for staff, the method for accounting for every child, and how you will contact families. Add the practical details that get forgotten under pressure, meaning where the first aid kit and a working torch are kept, the emergency numbers for fire and medical services, and the date you last reviewed the plan.

Assign roles to named people, not to "someone." Decide in advance who leads the children out, who carries the attendance register or device, who does a final sweep of the rooms and toilets, and who meets emergency services at the gate. In a small centre one person may hold two roles, and that is fine, as long as it is written down rather than assumed.

What Do You Do the Moment the Ground Shakes?

During an earthquake, the safest response is drop, cover, and hold, which Indonesian drills teach children as berlutut, lindungi kepala, dan bertahan. Get under a sturdy table, protect the head and neck, and stay there until the shaking stops.

The instinct to run outside while the ground is still moving is the dangerous one, because most injuries come from falling debris, glass, and toppling shelves near exits. Evacuate calmly only once the shaking has stopped.

For a fire, the response is the opposite, which is to leave immediately by the nearest safe route, staying low under smoke, and never stopping to collect belongings. For a flood, centres in low-lying areas should know in advance which is the highest safe floor or the nearest higher ground, and move children there rather than trying to travel through rising water.

This is why practice matters more than memorising a leaflet. Awareness of the megathrust potential along parts of the coast is a reason to prepare, not a forecast of any particular day, and a young child who has rehearsed a calm, familiar sequence is far less likely to freeze or panic than one hearing the instruction for the first time in a real event.

How Do You Set the Assembly Point and Evacuation Route?

Your assembly point, the titik kumpul, is an open space away from buildings, walls, glass, and power lines where the whole centre can gather and be counted. Choose it deliberately, mark it, and make sure every staff member knows exactly where it is. A vague "outside" is not an assembly point, because half the group ends up on the street and half in the car park and no single count is possible.

The evacuation route, the jalur evakuasi, is the shortest safe path from each room to that point. Keep it clear of clutter, keep the doors along it unlocked during opening hours, and use signage that staff recognise at a glance. Walk the route with your team so it is muscle memory, and plan a backup route in case the first one is blocked by the very thing you are escaping.

Plan for the youngest children specifically. Babies and toddlers who cannot walk quickly need a staff member assigned to carry or wheel them, and you need to know your ratio holds during an evacuation, not only during a calm afternoon.

How Do You Account for Every Child During an Evacuation?

The moment everyone reaches the titik kumpul, one question matters more than any other, which is whether every single child is there. This is where a centre relying only on a paper register struggles.

The register is often on a hook beside the door you just evacuated through, or a caregiver is trying to count the heads of moving, frightened toddlers from memory. A count you are not sure of is worse than no count, because an uncertain number can send an adult back into an unsafe building on a guess.

Take the roll at the assembly point against the exact list of who checked in that morning, not against a general class list. This is where digital attendance earns its place in an emergency, because check-in already records who is present that day, so a caregiver can open the day's list on the staff app at the titik kumpul and confirm each child by name instead of reconstructing it under pressure. You see who is accounted for and who is not, immediately, without hunting for paper.

Account for your staff and any visitors in the same pass, and note clearly who is confirmed safe and who is not yet found. Only a named, trained adult should ever re-enter the building, and only when it is genuinely safe to do so.

How Often Should You Run Drills, and How Do You Keep Staff and Parents Ready?

A plan that is practised is a plan that works, and a plan left in a drawer is only paper. Run drills on a regular, repeated schedule so that children respond to a familiar routine rather than a novel fright, and log each drill with a short note on what went smoothly and what was slow. Keep the drills calm and age-appropriate, because the goal for a toddler is a rehearsed habit, not fear.

Every staff member, including new and part-time caregivers, should know their role and the routes before they are ever alone with children. Brief them on their first day, keep first aid training current, and make the written plan easy to find rather than locked in an office. The person on the floor when something goes wrong is the person the plan has to work for.

Parents should know, at enrolment, that your plan exists, where the assembly point is, and how you will reach them. In a real event, a parent communication channel lets you send one clear message to every family at once and a calm update once the children are safe and accounted for, rather than a WhatsApp group filling with panicked questions. For a centre running early education and daycare, preparedness that is written down, practised, and communicated is what turns a plan on paper into real safety when it counts.

Key Takeaways

Write an emergency plan for the hazards your centre actually faces, meaning earthquake and fire for everyone and flood for low-lying areas, and align it to the national SPAB framework so it follows a recognised structure. Keep it short enough that a new caregiver can read it on their first morning.

Teach drop, cover, and hold for earthquakes, immediate exit for fire, and higher ground for floods, and assign named staff roles in advance rather than leaving jobs to "someone." Choose a real assembly point away from buildings and a clear evacuation route, and design both around the youngest children who cannot move themselves.

At the assembly point, account for every child by name against who actually checked in that day, which is far faster and more certain with digital attendance than with a paper register left by the door. Run drills on a regular schedule, log each one, brief every staff member on their role, and tell parents your plan exists and how you will contact them in an emergency.