Petal didn’t limit her message to only one country. From 2002 to 2005, quakes in Italy, Algeria and Pakistan killed more than 17,000 children and destroyed more than 8,500 schools. Petal quickly saw the need for governments worldwide to teach earthquake safety techniques and to improve the construction of school buildings. She joined the Coalition for Global School Safety, an international group of engineers, architects, social scientists and disaster workers from 40 countries. And with disaster preparedness expert Ilan Kelman, Petal founded RiskRED (Risk Reduction Education for Disasters; riskred.org), an online nongovernmental organization that Petal runs from Geneva, where she and her husband moved in 2007. Funded by grants, donations and consulting fees, Petal and her RiskRED colleagues work with governments and nonprofits worldwide to de-velop the plans that will save students’ lives in emergencies. “She’s an energy source, a connector,” says Tracy Monk, the Vancouver-based founder of Families for Seismic School Safety. “And she’s so insightful; she has a knack for distilling what a roomful of people are trying to say.”
Today, Petal’s work has an increasing impact worldwide. The United Nations recently released a report that Petal wrote, about disaster prevention in schools, to the education ministries of 168 member countries. UNICEF is using her earthquake safety checklist in China to help shape a major public awareness campaign after the Sichuan earthquake. In Turkey and Central Asia, the courses Petal developed—which include slides, safety manuals and booklets—have been used to train almost 30,000 teachers. She has written chapters for engineering and urban planning textbooks and penned articles for dozens of professional journals. Petal also directed and produced 20 short public-awareness films, which have been translated into many different languages and are shown in education workshops and on television.
All of this keeps Petal zipping around the globe: In 2008, she visited France, China, Uzbekistan, South Africa, Turkey, California and Seattle; in 2009, she’ll travel to eight more countries. “The number of people we reach is in the millions,” Petal says. Still, she continues to touch individual lives: A grandmother in Uzbekistan promised to name her next grandchild Marla as thanks for Petal’s lessons; classrooms of children around the world proudly show her their earthquake safety skills.
