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FSEC discusses emergency response plans
By MARY COCHRANE
Contributing Editor
Many campus emergencies are predictable incidents, ranging from power outages to traffic accidents to weather-related shutdowns, all of which have occurred and will occur again at UB.
It's the unforeseen crises, "that mystery box" of instances we haven't thought of yet, as Vice President for Student Affairs Dennis R. Black calls it, that drove administrators this past summer to update and sharpen UB's safety and incident response plans.
Ten of those administrators met with the Faculty Senate Executive Committee yesterday to discuss what the new plans mean for UB and to answer questions about how the university might fare in future emergencies.
The difficulty, of course, is trying to imagine what those emergencies will be, according to James "Beau" Willis, executive vice president for university support services.
"We know there will be a power outage some time in the next six to eight months...We know there will be a fire someplace at some time. So we have standard operating procedures for a wide variety of incidents that one can fall back on," Willis said. "But the point is, we don't know what the next incident is going to be. We know we're going to have one, but we don't know what it is, so we need personnel who are going to be able to respond."
As a result, UB has rewritten its "All Hazard Emergency Plan" that aligns with the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the Incident Command System (ICS), considered the national standards of emergency planning. A key part of the plan was putting in place the new text-messaging service that allows the university to disseminate crucial information quickly throughout the UB community during critical incidents.
Additionally, UB created an Emergency Oversight Committee to advance the emergency planning agenda, as well as an Extended Operations Group of campus leaders who are being trained in the ICS and NIMS systems. Details of the UB plan and other updates are available on the university's emergency preparedness Web site.
"At the core, it's doing everything we can to ensure that we have a safe and secure environment in which our students can live and learn, and in which our faculty and staff can work," Willis said. "Whether it's 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina, the magnitude of what can happen in any kind of environment is overwhelming. The Virginia Tech incident of six month or so ago really hit home that it could happen on our campus."
Faculty senators had several questions for the panel, which in addition to Willis and Black, included Randall E. Borst, director of disability services; Chet Dunn, information security officer; Michael F. Dupre, associate vice president for university facilities; Elias G. Eldayrie, chief information officer; Elizabeth A. Lidano, director of judicial affairs; Sharon L. Mitchell, director of student health and wellness; Scott D. Nostaja, interim vice president of human resources; and Gerald W. Schoenle, Jr., chief of police.
Faculty senators and guests asked about which communication methods would be used in emergencies. Barbara Rittner, associate dean for external affairs for the School of Social Work, encouraged the use of loud alarm systems in addition to text messaging that "depends on so much happening simultaneously: You have your phone on, you are in a place that gets good reception, and it's on sound as opposed to vibration.
"In a true emergency, there ought to be something that is immediately apparent to everyone, and obviously heard by everybody, with the exception of the hearing impaired," she said.
Schoenle and others on the panel agreed. Schoenle said that in addition to the text-messaging system and police, facilities and residence life radio systems, the university police recently switched to a phone system that allows communication between the phone and radio systems.
"We've learned that in every major disaster in this country's history, there has been a problem with communications. We experienced that ourselves with the October storm, so you have to have multiple methods in place for communications; you can't just rely on one," he said. "We need Web sites, we need phone trees, we need manual postings, we need signs as well as text messaging.
He added that the emergency blue light phones on UB campuses eventually will be replaced with state-of-the-art phones what have speaker systems and closed-circuit television cameras.
Eyradie said the emergency plan requires "a number of different investments" in "three major categories (of communication), which are active, proactive and individual," and that a public address system is one of the methods.
"There are a number of things we would put in place and we can't rely on one, because one might fail," he said.
Scott Danford, associate professor in the School of Architecture and Planning, asked about tracking and responding to special-needs individuals. Students have the option to identify themselves as requiring special assistance in emergencies, Black said. Nostaja added that human resources will be formulating a similar self-report plan for faculty and staff with special needs.
Peter G. Bradford, associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology, said that for him, "everyone is seeing the preparedness that is going on and the safety upgrades are becoming apparent" across the campuses. But, he added, everyone must be willing to do the work required in planning for emergencies.
Holding up a notice Bradford said had been posted about an upcoming evacuation drill—"this is a copy of one; I didn't take it down," he added, to much laughter—he praised the panel for tightening requirements for participation in such drills.
"I'm glad to see this because I work in a lab and often, when the alarms go off, a lot of people don't leave because they are in the middle of something," he said. "Here, we have something that gives a week's notice and that states that everyone must evacuate the building and that there will be maps to tell us where to exit and captains recording who is in and out. Everything seems to be coming into place from an employee's point of view."
Several faculty senators asked about how to deal with mental health issues among students and how to prevent crises with individual students and in classroom situations. Rittner mentioned there are multiple ethical and legal concerns involved in approaching and speaking to a student who may or may not need counseling, and suggested that the university devise "a policy that would make faculty feel secure" in deciding to take action.
Mitchell replied that "the idea of diagnosing students should not be one that is even on the table."
"The focus is helping people develop the skills to be aware of whether a student is experiencing some sort of emotional or psychological distress and being informed about the resources available to the student," Mitchell said. "We do a lot of consulting with faculty about students they are concerned about. The biggest problem that I see is faculty feeling like they don't have the language to even have a conversation with a student they are concerned about. And also that fine line between expressing concern and recommending that someone make use of resources versus requiring that they do."
Black referred the faculty to the comprehensive list of resources to be consulted if they have concerns about someone who appears to pose a threat to themselves or others. The list details warning signs, "what we should be watching for in each other," and was distributed via email and on the MyUB Web site earlier this month.
"You don't need to be the decision-maker, you don't need to be the action officer; what you need to do is be the spotter. Share what you see. If it doesn't look right, let someone else who has the expertise or experience decide, whether it's a police circumstance or a counseling circumstance or an issue with substances or violence or anger. Let's make sure that those issues are identified to those with the ability to do some screening, do some thinking and do some work."
Nostaja added that the university is in the midst of hiring a full-time employee assistance program director, "a professional who will be charged entirely with serving as a resource for staff and faculty to access mental health resources." Faculty and staff members also may call a 24-hour EAP hotline at 645-4500 if they have questions regarding their peers.
Willis noted that "with respect to prevention, a number of resources are in place and we are in the process of putting together a number of formal training sessions for faculty to help you understand how to address this in the classroom, what is your role and how to identify students who may be in crisis, who you should contact, what you should do, what you should say or not say. This information may have been available before, but it wasn't readily accessible in a structural way, so we're working to put that into place."
Stella Batalama of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences wondered if "too much emphasis on protocols sometimes immobilizes reactions and immobilizes people."
"We know what happened in 9/11. People (in the World Trade Center towers) needed to go down, but they were told 'Don't leave; stay in your offices,' which was disastrous," she said.
Schoenle, who worked in one of the communities struck by Hurricane Katrina, recalled that "one of the problems we had was finding enough cots for people, with 11,000 people coming into the community in three days."
"No one could plan for that, but the same thing could happen here at UB. We might have a problem in Buffalo and the community might rely on us to be a big player to help house people. That's the good thing about the 'vanilla,' if you will, hazards plan. It's adaptable to address those kinds of things," he said.
Mitchell told faculty members that her office also conducts training in Question-Persuade-Refer (QPR), a behavioral intervention program that focuses on helping distressed students access professional help. For information, contact Counseling Services at 645-2720.