My first thought when I hear about another school shooting
As a disabled woman who was once a disabled highschooler.
Yesterday, the unfathomable happened.
In a small town in British Columbia, Tumbler Ridge, a shooter entered a high school with a weapon, determined to inflict harm. That person killed seven individuals at the school and injured many others.
Tumbler Ridge is just a tiny population of 2,400. Everyone knows everyone. And I can’t even come close to imagining how they are feeling today, waking up to a completely different world to the one they woke up to yesterday.
As I think about this community and the survivors and this heavy, traumatic experience they now hold in their bones, I find myself circling around the same thought that emerges whenever we hear news of a mass shooting or attack.
“What happens to disabled kids and teachers in a school shooting?”
What happens to the wheelchair user who can’t safely get down to the ground on her own to hide?
And if she does find a way, what happens when she loses her mobility and gets left behind?
What happens to the teacher who moves through the world at a slower pace than others? Be it with a mobility aid or not?
What happens to the blind student who can’t assess where it’s safe to go?
Or the deaf student who doesn’t hear an alarm and is seconds too late in noticing that something is going on?
What happens to the autistic student who can’t regulate their nervous system enough to stay quiet or still?
Are their experiences ever factored into emergency response plans?
And even if they are, do those factors of the plan withstand the panic?
I know for a fact that if this had happened in my high school — which was also in a Canadian town of just over 2,000 people — I would have been among the most vulnerable there.
I wouldn’t have been able to hide or drop down to the ground in my wheelchair.
Or make myself small to fit into a tiny space.
Or run away quickly.
The twinge of panic that makes me feel is only a glimpse at the unimaginable helplessness and fear disabled students and teachers must have felt yesterday and in every other school shooting.
My heart goes out to the town of Tumbler Ridge today.
To all the teachers and students that went through this unimaginable experience.
And, as a disabled woman myself, I’m especially carving out a space for the disabled kids and teachers that went through it feeling in their bones that they were especially at risk.
