After a power outage on Tuesday, Aug. 26 left the Texas A&M University-Commerce community in the dark for several hours, with numerous conflicting messages being sent from different sources, university officials have begun revising the current Crisis Management Plan to better serve students and faculty in the event of further crises.
“[The power outage was] a minimal disruption which nonetheless gave us the opportunity to test our systems,” Dr. Dan Jones, A&M-Commerce president said. “We discovered a few weaknesses which we discussed among the executive team last week in a debriefing session. We are working to strengthen those areas now.”
A&M-Commerce already has a comprehensive crisis plan in place, but is under revision to help “clarify roles and responsibilities in alerting the community,” Bob Brown, vice president for business and administration, said.
“A&M-Commerce takes its management very seriously,” Brown said. “We want to make sure that students and the public who are affected by crises on campus are alerted as soon as possible. The University is revising the current crisis plan based on lessons learned in the past to ensure everybody’s safety.”
Because the power outage caught much of the campus community off-guard, impromptu ways of handling the situation had to be implemented by crisis management teams.
“You can never fully anticipate every crisis,” Randy Jolly, executive director of marketing communications said. “Our previous exercises didn’t anticipate a complete electrical power failure.”
The main elements of the crisis – evacuating affected parties, crisis teams went into action immediately to ensure everybody’s safety, local authorities were quick to respond and backup procedures were initiated – were covered quickly. However, the power outage presented new obstacles in technology.
“Trying to communicate in today’s world without computers is a new twist and we learned from this exercise how to better prepare for electrical outage,” Jolly said.
According to Jolly, handheld radios were used in addition to cell phones to alert the community during the power outage. Backup generators were used to power KETR and the University Police Department, as well as off-site wireless capability.
“The A&M-Commerce community and its safety is at the forefront of our planning and preparedness,” Jolly said. “You cannot prepare for every eventuality, but we do have a very workable plan in place to respond quickly and provide a very high level of safety to the campus community.”
“The power outage showed that dependence on electrical power in dealing with crisis needs to be addressed,” Jolly said. “The elements of the existing plan worked exceptionally well, and having to deal without electrical power provided new opportunities to learn and adjust the plan to those new eventualities and challenges.”
The main revision to the crisis plan includes the addition of a Crisis Communication Plan, headed by Jolly.
According to Mary Hendrix, interim provost and vice president for academic and student affairs, because of the confusion created from too many conflicting messages being sent from different sources, in the future all messages will be written by Mr. Jolly’s area, Marketing Communications, before they are sent to students, faculty and staff through the alert system.
Instead of multiple messages being sent from several sources, an initial message will be sent from Marketing Communications with a specified time of when updates will be provided for subsequent messages.
Hendrix stresses that students should make sure that their contact information is correct in order to receive alerts through the PAWS system. Students can update their information through MyLeo, and faculty can update their information through HRConnect.
Jolly emphasizes the importance of student and community involvement with the alert system, accentuating the need for the community to use their heads and be thinking what they’d do if something happens.
“Seconds count in an emergency and reacting properly can save your life,” Jolly said. “If an authorized person comes to your building or classroom and tells you to evacuate, don’t stand around and think about it. Get out. If they tell you to stay in a building, don’t go running out into the parking lot to see what’s going on.”
Jolly said that students and faculty should immediately report strange or unusual behavior to campus authorities and the UPD.
“The UPD and campus authorities would rather it turn out to be nothing of importance rather than [regretting not taking action sooner],” Jolly said.