Nothing is immune from disaster, not even a well-prepared University. Emergencies can arise at any time and from a number of either natural or man-made events. The best thing a busy university can do to minimize losses and recover quickly from an emergency such as blizzards, fires, hurricanes, or acts of terrorism is to have a well-constructed emergency management system in place.
On a large university the first step in establishing an effective emergency management system is to know the five phases involved in any imminent danger and implement them. These are:
There is an overwhelming number of people on a university that need to be alerted in the event of an emergency, and don't forget the parents of the students who will also expect to be kept informed.
The most effective form of alerting an entire university when an impending disaster is imminent, such as a tornado, is with well-placed sirens. Students, faculty, and staff should all be schooled on how to react when those sirens go off.
For other types of emergency events, such drastic action is not always necessary. Automated emergency alerts have been found to be extremely effective on campus when the entire student body is facing danger.
Services like DialMyCalls can assist in this by storing all the contact information the university needs and sending messages to the student's cell phones. With DialMyCalls, the university has the choice to either use phone calls or SMS text messages. The contact list can be grouped so that a revised message could be sent to the parents and another to the faculty and staff. Everyone about to be affected by the emergency is alerted and given instructions on how to react quickly and stay safe.
Web pages and social media are great communication tools in the aftermath of the event. Using DialMyCalls again, all contacts can be directed via phone call, text message, and email to a web page that has been devoted to keeping the university community and parents up-to-date on the recovery progress.
Below are just a few of the thousands of educational institutions that use our system.