College to test emergency protocols

Author: Michael Suen

In developing a comprehensive emergency response protocol, the College plans to test AlertFind, a sophisticated broadcast notification system, as early as next week's spring break. The test will allow the College to identify flaws in the system and expose students to the College's plans in case of an emergency.

Using the contact information provided by students, faculty and staff on Bannerweb last semester, AlertFind is a form of emergency communication capable of contacting the entire College community via home phones, cell phones, pagers, wireless devices, SMS and e-mail.

"Students will be able to see how AlertFind works," said Dean of Planning John Emerson and co-chair of the Emergency Planning Steering Committee, which consists of both students and staff. "[Updated contact information] is downloaded every week by the company that provides the AlertFind emergency notification system to ensure that it is current."

The system was previously tested with nearly 100 Library and Information Systems staff members. Since then, several changes have been made to the notification system, most notably the removal of a password that initially was needed to access emergency messages.

Also, in another recent small-scale test, e-mail filters interpreted several of AlertFind's emergency notifications as spam. Technical steps have been taken to ensure notifications reach all College members as soon as possible.

According to Emerson, the conception of such an all-encompassing emergency plan has been a difficult and thorough process, especially in accommodating the large numbers of students that join the campus in the spring, as well as the constant shifting and irregular schedules of the College staff.

In order to protect individuals' privacy, all cell phone data was password-protected and treated differently than the more public information that was entered on BannerWeb. At the same time, Emerson reiterated the importance of safety at the College.

"We don't want advertisers to get access to personal information. But it's not really a problem of secrecy," he said. "We're trying to make this as public as we can make it, but there are some things we do have to be careful about."

The College does not intend to use or verify the personal emergency or evacuation plans on BannerWeb, though the Emergency Planning Steering Committee has considered using geographic location data to facilitate emergency transportation and ridesharing. The personal plans had been intended more as an opportunity for students to actively consider potential methods of evacuation, according to Emerson.

In addition to developing an emergency response system, the Emergency Planning Steering Committee has also contributed to the 2008-2009 budgeting process. Currently, they plan to purchase extra electrical generators to avoid damages from a possible power surge, such as in the case of those that occurred last July 4 and more recently, the early morning of March 9. Students have voiced their concerns, questioning whether such blackouts have been indicative of a larger problem with campus emergency response.

"The entire radio station was down because of the power surge," said Taylor Smith '11, a student disk jockey at WRMC. "It's kind of ridiculous that there wasn't any back-up emergency plan to prevent these things from happening."

"[While language schools were in full operation], emergency lighting, elevators and ventilation in kitchens weren't working," said Emerson of the July 4 power outage. "These are basic things that we didn't have enough capacity to keep running. And this would be costly.We're not talking chump change."

Other developments in emergency planning have included a survey of departments that would play key roles in the case of a crisis, including Facilities Services, Dining Services, Parton Health Center, Library and Information Systems and Dean of the College/Student Life. The various departments are in the process of reviewing their own internal procedures, and updating them to correlate with campus-wide emergency plans.