Sept. 17, 2002
Planning a Safer GW
Comprehensive Safety Plan Approved; Community Invited
to Offer Suggestions
By Greg
Licamele
If you’re reading this in a building right
now, then do you know where to find the nearest exit? Does your office
have a supply of flashlights? Do you have extra prescription medicine
in your desk?
These are some of the questions GW community members should be able
to answer as the University encourages employees and students to become
more familiar with their surroundings and to follow the Boy Scouts motto
of “Be prepared.”
In eight months, GW’s Department of Public Safety and Emergency
Management has tied together all of the existing emergency plans into
one document that is available for the community’s feedback at
www.gwu.edu/~response.
This manual will anchor the University’s incident planning from
a false alarm to a catastrophe.
“It is important that the GW community look after itself by studying
this document and suggesting improvements,” says University President
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg. “I hope we never have to implement this
plan, but in order to be ready for any possible circumstance faculty,
staff, and students must be equipped with information. We all need to
know how to safely leave our building. We need to know where to go after
we exit. We need to think ahead about our welfare and that of those
around us.”
“Planning makes people feel much more confident when they’re
faced with a situation,” says John Petrie, assistant vice president
for public safety and emergency management. “The things we do in
the first few minutes can make a difference.”
Petrie, a retired Navy captain who began working at GW in December,
says this plan does not revolve around major overhauls, merging departments,
or increasing spending like the government’s response in the wake
of Sept. 11. He says GW is not doubling the size of the police force
nor is it installing a huge search light over Foggy Bottom.
Instead, this plan relies primarily on planning, policy issues, and
the decisions people make. The central plan exists online, including
definitions for incidents and alert levels (see sidebars above), but
each department, ranging from the Law School to J Street, must have
its own safety appendix that each employee should be aware of and that
must be validated each July.
“The appendices will be of only as much use as the effort and insight
that goes into building them,” says Petrie, who brings ample planning
experience to GW having run the world’s largest naval station in
Norfolk, VA. “Then those plans will need to be understood by the
people they directly affect.”
Petrie says some aspects of the manual, such as the location of the
emergency command center and technology issues like backup servers,
will not be released to the public. But he stresses that all employees
and students need to examine the manual and its priorities and intentions,
in addition to accessing their local plans. Petrie says all suggestions
for the manual, which can be submitted online, will receive feedback.
With the general plan ready, Petrie anticipates the local planning process
to begin or, in many cases, to be updated.
“Now that we have an approved plan from the president and vice
presidents, I expect I’ll have requests to talk to the deans and
department heads about what’s in it and to assist them in reviewing
their local drafts and helping them prepare a plan that’s useful,”
Petrie says.
The manual requires a multitude of answers and preparations from local
contingency plans, including the standards for evacuation, the authority
to suspend class (and when to reconvene), and who needs to be contacted
to restore operations after an incident.
Petrie cites the unlikely event of a lengthy electrical outage as one
situation departments need to consider.
“This manual will put people in a position where they will have
had to think about how they would do their job manually,” Petrie
says. “For the comptroller’s office, what do they need to
sit down and write checks?”
Safety 101
GW faces an immense safety responsibility as the largest private employer
in the District, in addition to the 20,000 enrolled students at GW facilities.
Communication among departments at Foggy Bottom, up the street at the
Mount Vernon Campus, and across the river at the Virginia Campus stands
as a cornerstone to the effectiveness of the comprehensive plan.
“We’ve been coordinating with the University’s departments
to plan for the impact emergencies will have on employees here,”
says Susan Kaplan, associate vice president for human resources. “We’ll
continue to do that. This includes anticipating possible events and
their ramifications and developing response plans.”
Kaplan believes GW needs to develop clear messages with wide dissemination
that explain situations. The University has reached this planning goal
by enhancing the University Police Department’s communications
equipment, most notably with a public address system that will be installed
on each scout car, 4RIDE vans, and buses. Those PA systems, Petrie says,
will allow police and designated personnel to take those vehicles to
different places on campus and transmit messages campus-wide if the
need arises.
More conventional communication methods such as E-mail, voicemail, fax,
and Web sites also have been reviewed since last September. During that
tragic September day, the University sent a mass E-mail to all employees
and students. However, the message lacked one element — a “signature”
to give it credibility. Michael Freedman, vice president for communications,
says that simple change has been made to all mass E-mails as the last
lines now indicate which vice president or office authorized the message.
“If you receive an E-mail or fax from an anonymous person in a
crisis situation, I think you have reason to be skeptical that it’s
legitimate,” Freedman says. “It is our responsibility to make
sure the word gets out in a variety of ways so that the maximum number
of people know what’s going on. One of the critical elements is
to be able to offer only valid information.”
Building on Existing Foundations
These small changes, in addition to larger ones, have been brought together
by Petrie, who studied the emergency plans that already existed. Linda
Donnels, dean of students, says that during incidents, GW employees
have established roles and comprehensive protocols to follow.
“Whatever needs to be done, we do, from directing people, going
online, and cordoning off streets, to needing community facilitators,
electricians, GWorld staff, or the Metropolitan Police Department,”
Donnels says. “If it has a legal aspect, then you need an attorney.”
In addition to GW concerns, Petrie says the University must consider
how private, federal, and local organizations prepare and respond to
incidents, such as this month’s World Bank/IMF protests.
“There may be minor modifications to our normal schedule that will
affect a small number of people, so the need for folks to carry their
GWorld cards will be real,” Petrie says. “So the coordination
I’ve done with the MPD to ensure that GW community people have
access to GW resources is something we can make real.”
Emergency planning at a large institution like GW can be challenging
enough. But Richard Sawaya, vice president for government, international,
and corporate affairs, says working in coordination with the metropolitan
area agencies and governments can compound the task.
“The greater Washington region is one of the nation’s most
complicated — in terms of complementary governing bodies and intersecting
institutions,” Sawaya says. “GW is indeed ‘in the middle
of it all.’ We are most fortunate to have John Petrie as a colleague
to lead our effort in emergency planning. The comprehensive safety plan
is a superior guide to move us all to implement the Scout motto: ‘Be
prepared.’”
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
