Emergency plans reviewed to enhance safety

In the aftermath of the shootings that left 33 dead at Virginia Tech, UD officials immediately began reviewing and evaluating the University’s emergency plans.

“The Virginia Tech tragedy makes us even more mindful of our responsibility to safeguard all the members of our community,” President David P. Roselle wrote in a letter just after the April 16 shootings. Addressing the issues raised by the killings is “our top priority” at UD, he said.

“Our security and emergency plans are multifaceted and involve city, county and state police,” Roselle wrote. “Those plans are routinely evaluated and, in view of this week’s tragedy, a comprehensive evaluation is under way, and additional ways to improve protection will be specified.”

At UD, a key official in the evaluation process is alumna Marcia Cavanaugh Nickle, who in March was appointed the University’s emergency preparedness coordinator in charge of all emergency and disaster planning for all UD campuses. Nickle, AS ’98, ’00M, formerly was a planner in the New Castle County (Del.) Office of Emergency Management and director of emergency services for the Delmarva chapter of the American Red Cross.

“The University gave me a great education that enabled me to get those wonderful positions, so it’s good to be back to make it a better place for other students,” she says.

In the days after the Virginia shootings, James T. Flatley, director of UD’s Department of Public Safety, said that a system to notify students more quickly about emergency situations was already
in the works.

“In light of the tragedy that occurred at Virginia Tech, the Department of Public Safety here at UD is not only reviewing our emergency preparedness plan, but we have started the process of purchasing an emergency notification system that will include text messaging,” Flatley said.
“We have been meeting with law enforcement agencies in the state to discuss what happened at Virginia Tech and look at what we have in place and what we might need to adjust.”

In his April 17 letter to the University community, Roselle noted that text messaging systems send text messages to large numbers of cell phones almost instantaneously.

“For these capabilities to be fully useful, it is necessary for each student to enter his or her cell phone number in the student information system, UDSIS,” Roselle wrote. “I encourage every student to list their cell phone numbers as soon as possible.”
Nickle’s responsibilities include coordinating training for staff and students, conducting exercises in “What if?” situations and planning for special and major events on campus. She also serves as the liaison with external government and municipal agencies.

“Marcia Nickle brings vast knowledge and experience, which will be very beneficial to the whole University community,” Flatley says. “In this day and age, her role is extremely important because, as we experienced in the past, not only with manmade disasters but with things like Hurricane Katrina, we must be prepared. It doesn’t have to be a major incident; we need to be prepared even for small incidents that could disrupt University activities.”
Soon after her appointment, Nickle says, she read through several thick files containing all UD emergency and disaster plans.

“The University already has a good basis,” Nickle says. “There are groups on campus that have been meeting and planning, so I’m only coming to tweak what is already there and not to start from scratch. In that respect, UD is much better prepared than other places. We have a good basis to start from.”
During her graduate studies at UD, Nickle was a research assistant at the Disaster Research Center, where she worked on a federal project impact review program and a survey project on the Northridge earthquake in California.

At the New Castle County Office of Emergency Management, her job involved “a little bit of everything,” she says, including writing plans, organizing programs, making presentations, budgeting, field work and responding to scenes of fires and other emergencies.

“I come from a background of writing plans for multiple hazards rather than specific hazards, so I’ll use an all-hazards approach, and my tendency is toward that kind of plan writing,” Nickle says. “I tend to focus on floods because they are more likely to happen, but I also have to think of where we are. There are lots of hazards around, as well as terrorism and pandemic flu, but you have to make sure you don’t get wrapped up in one thing and lose sight of the big picture.

“We are going to plan for all situations, but we will be realistic about what is more likely to affect us and what we need to be focusing on.”
Nickle says she will be meeting routinely with contacts from all campus units and departments, from the Department of Occupational Health and Safety to Residence Life and administrators.