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Best Practices in Emergency Communications
5/9/2008
Sirens cannot convey a lot of information. Even two or three different siren codes are enough to confuse almost everyone. They are, however, cheap (typically $50,000 per siren) and reliable. They get people to turn on their cell phones and check their e-mail. Some of the more sophisticated systems can also broadcast a brief audio message as well as a siren tone. Some siren vendors are: American Signal Corp., ATI Systems, Federal Signal, Hormann America, Klaxon, Sentry Siren, and Whelen.One of the things I learned living in Lincoln, NB in the 1980s was that when the tornado siren went off you took shelter! Not in a few minutes, but right then. The secret of their success was that the people at the controls were very sensitive about crying wolf. The alarm wasn't sounded when there was a just possibility of a tornado, or even a tornado sighted in another part of town. When the siren went off and you could hear it, it meant you, and it meant now. Campuses need to remember that when they set policies about when they will use their siren.
According to Lilly and Rogers, before Virginia Tech installed VT Alert, they had extensive discussions with faculty and students that resulted in an agreement that the system would only be used for emergencies and would only be tested once a semester.
Cell Phones and Wireless Laptops Alternatives
As previously mentioned, cell phones and wireless-capable laptops can be disruptive in a classroom environment, and many instructors ask that they not be turned off during class. That introduces a need for back-channel strategies, such as a siren. Even though the campus has a siren system, the Information Technology unit at Virginia Tech is developing a Banner Notification system for classrooms. Normally the 36-inch by 8-inch display unobtrusively shows the time of day. In the event of an emergency, however, a brief message scrolls across the display. The displays are hardwired into the campus network and are powered over the network. The campus decided to develop the system in house after pricing commercially available systems.
What About an Urban Campus?
Virginia Tech is a relatively rural campus. What happens on a highly urban campus such as George Washington University located in the heart of DC? They adopted three strategies. The first was to make use of an already existing system,
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