Seeing the havoc and pain caused by questionable emergency preparedness and response planning in New Orleans should spur the Georgetown community to examine the efficacy of the university’s own emergency management plan. Thoughtful planning characterizes the university’s preparedness, but the results of this planning have not been carefully explained to the campus community.
A university-maintained preparedness website, preparedness.georgetown.edu, serves as the main source of emergency information. The downfall of the site is its sheer obscurity-it has only a small link at the bottom of the Georgetown homepage and is most often used to announce “snow days.” Though highly informative, the resource receives scant attention from the campus community.
The centerpiece of the preparedness site is the text of the emergency management plan, a comprehensive document detailing the procedures that would go into effect in the case of a campus-wide or regional emergency. The plan creates 12 Emergency Support Teams under the direction of specific university departments. These ESTs meet once a month to discuss disaster scenarios and review emergency procedures. The plan also details the creation of an executive committee, headed by the president, to take charge during an emergency.
David Morrell, vice president of university safety, noted several other precautions. They include: supplying every campus building with three days-worth of food and other necessities, regularly training DPS officers as first responders and creating the building marshal system-which places at least one individual responsible for emergency management in each campus building during normal business hours.
The emergency preparedness plan appears to create a sprawling bureaucracy, but it actually ensures that there are no questions about what needs to be done or who needs to do it.
Where the plan does display a glaring weakness is in the area of communication, both before and during an emergency. The university goes to no great length to keep its students informed of emergency procedures. Advance knowledge of what to do during emergencies could prevent a general panic should such a measure ever become necessary. Students should be publicly briefed on these issues.
The plan stresses that a website and the 7-SNOW telephone line are the school’s emergency communication lines. If the internet or the phones were out, however, a student would have to track down a marshal to receive information. The campus alert horn, intended to function as an oversized rape whistle, could also warn students to seek shelter, but students must be able to recognize it and know how to respond.
Although Georgetown’s emergency response plan appears adequate to serve the needs of the campus community, until communication improves, we do not consider it entirely effective. Information, after all, is the most important commodity in a crisis situation.
