Jason Harward co-editor-in-chief
With three major fires burning in Southern California and a mandatory evacuation area stretching as far into West Los Angeles as the UCLA campus, Superintendent Michael Bregy is staying on top of the constantly evolving wildfire situation.
“We are in contact with the police chief and our police officer liaison to keep in touch with what’s happening with the entire community. We’re working mainly through air quality monitoring and just staying on top of any changes,” Bregy said.
However, on the athletics front, anything held outside will be canceled. Any indoor events, including the Beverly Hills Basketball Invitational Tournament, have been given the green light to continue.
“With this particular situation, I met with Mr. Mead and we decided that if it’s an indoor event there is no to need to cancel the event,” Bregy said. “Anything outside would be canceled.”
Although their practice is indoors, girls varsity basketball coach John Braddell canceled practice to make sure the players and coaches stayed healthy.
“I don’t like missing practice time but the health of our players and coaches is much more important. We will have to have a really focused practice the rest of the week,” Braddell said. “The girls program is lucky we don’t have any games scheduled this week.”
School nurse Dellise Mason urged any students experiencing coughing or breathing trouble to go home, as the school is limited in what it can do to help students with respiratory problems.
“Because we can’t give students any medication, our best thing to do is just to send them home,” she said.
Going forward, administration will continue to monitor the situation and address changes in the danger associated with poor air quality on any of the five campuses.
“It isn’t a one-size-fits-all situation because these things change on an hourly basis as far as air quality,” Bregy said. “We’re on site at each of our five schools to just monitor the situation and see what happens.”
Featured image courtesy Noah Danesh, KBEV. See more footage here
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