Albany students practice bus safety procedures twice a year, whether or not they are regular bus riders.

That's so they can be safe on field trips or rooter buses, or ready for a one-time ride with a friend. But the practice also makes sure students are prepared for another possibility, which has been on Superintendent Jim Golden's mind lately: the need to evacuate a building.

The hurricanes that leveled structures in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico aren't a danger to the mid-valley, but other natural disasters lie in wait, particularly the overdue quake in the Cascadia Subduction Zone. And, Golden said, as unthinkable as it might be, human-caused disasters such as last week's massacre in Las Vegas can't be ruled out completely.

"My hope is that we have a community-wide focus on becoming better prepared for disasters," he said.

"We know that the most likely disasters we would experience here in the mid-Willamette Valley are earthquakes, fires and possibly some kind of chemical spill from I-5 or our railyard," he went on. "We could possibly also have a weeklong cold spell where we had some loss of electrical service and difficulty traveling."