Work group drafts postdisaster response plan for AU
BY MATT GETTY In the wake of August’s devastating hurricanes and their impact on universities in New Orleans in particular, many in the campus community are considering more closely how AU would withstand a natural disaster or similar large-scale emergency. For Pat Kelshian, Tanisha Edmunds-Jagoe, and other members of the university-wide Emergency Preparedness Work Group, however, that question has been at the top of their minds for years. When acting president Neil Kerwin asked them in September to report on AU’s emergency preparedness, in fact, the work group unveiled a draft business continuity plan they’ve been crafting for five months, discussing for a year, and planning since 2001. “Emergency preparedness is an ongoing process,” explained Kelshian, executive director of risk management and safety services. “It’s something you don’t ever stop working on.” Although AU has always had plans for responding to specific weather-related emergencies, the Emergency Preparedness Work Group created full-scale evacuation plans and formal emergency management procedures in 2001 in response to 9-11. In the months following that tragedy and a bomb scare that forced a campus evacuation in the same week, the newly formed work group established an Emergency Response Team and Emergency Assistance Staff comprising 200 faculty, staff, and students from across the university. In the event of an emergency, these individuals were trained to help evacuate buildings, direct traffic, forward telephones, organize first aid stations, and coordinate emergency care for the campus community. In the four years since establishing these groups, Kelshian and Edmunds-Jagoe reported, the Emergency Preparedness Work Group has made several key improvements to their procedures. In 2003, they added plans for “sheltering in,” a situation in which the AU community would be confined to specific buildings due to environmental hazards or a chemical attack. Over the last year, Edmunds-Jagoe, the director of business compliance, has worked to simplify the training manuals and the software that provides guidance during an actual emergency for the Emergency Response Team. Additionally, training for the team now includes
scenario-based exercises and advice on how to ensure disaster preparedness at home. Most recently, the Emergency Preparedness Work Group has dedicated its efforts to formally defining not just what the university would do in the event of a disaster, but also what it would do, and can do now, to ensure its continuation after a disaster. The newly drafted business continuity plan covers such issues as how AU would replace damaged office supplies for department’s whose function is essential for day-to-day operations, maintain power in the midst of a sustained power grid failure, and continue to educate students if they are displaced for an extended amount of time. “If we lose a lot of classrooms, can we do distance education?” explained Kelshian. “Can we find other schools who would temporarily accommodate our students? And what would it take to do either of those things? These are the kinds of questions we’re trying to answer.” Though the formal draft business continuity plan resulted from a year of weekly Emergency Preparedness Work Group meetings, its roots actually stretch back to the emergency planning that began in 2001. “When you think about it,” said Kelshian, “emergency preparedness and business continuity really go together. You can’t plan for what you’re going to do to get through an emergency without planning on what you do to keep things going after an emergency and vice versa.” Kelshian expects the work group to finalize its draft of the business continuity plan by January 2006. At that point it will go to the president’s cabinet for their consideration. In the meantime, there is one simple thing all AU community members can do to help the Emergency Preparedness Work Group make sure the university is fully prepared to face and survive a natural disaster or terrorist attack. “If everyone could keep their information up-to-date, so that we can contact you if something happens, it would be a big help,” Edmunds-Jagoe explained, noting that if AU staff, faculty, and students merely update their contact information through the my.american.edu portal, it will be automatically updated in the Emergency Preparedness contact list. |
