Quick action on campus saved lives, and university officials are now examining how they can improve disaster response and upgrade life safety systems to better protect students and faculty.
A tragedy that occurred hundreds of miles away prepared officials at Northern Illinois University (NIU) in DeKalb for the possibility of a crisis on their own campus. And when that day came this past February, some lives were lost, some were saved and many were altered forever when a gunman began shooting people on campus.
In 2007, the entire nation was reeling from the devastation of the Virginia Tech University shootings in Blacksburg, Va. As a result of that tragedy, NIU decided to apply lessons learned from Virginia Tech and re-examine and fine-tune its own emergency plan. The hope, of course, was never to have to implement the plan for a similar event. Unfortunately, NIU’s emergency plan was put to the test on Feb. 14, 2008, as the result of a shooting on campus.
No one knew why the shooter chose NIU, other than he had previously attended classes there. A history of mental illness may have brought him to Cole Hall where he opened fire, killing five students and injuring more than 20. He also shot himself and died at the scene.
As the emergency unfolded, NIU replaced its normal Web site home page with an all-crisis news page, explaining the incident, and it disseminated an e-mail message notifying the campus population that a shooting was underway. In addition, public safety officials arrived on the scene within minutes to restore safety.
Because of the emergency plan’s warning messages, many students and faculty locked themselves into rooms, turned lights off, closed drapes and hid. Others stayed off campus, while others fled the area.
A major part of NIU’s mass notification success was the all-crisis Web site format. Before the shooting, NIU had installed six dedicated servers to support the Web site, which was a fortuitous decision: In the first 48 hours after the shooting, the NIU Web site got 14 million hits.
“If we did not have those servers, it would have crashed,” said Melanie Magara, NIU’s Assistant Vice President for Public Affairs. “We had people who learned in a timely manner what was happening on campus via our Web site.”
NIU has been appropriately praised for its actions and reactions regarding the situation. However, some students and faculty learned, taught, talked and walked on campus throughout the shooting. They were not using computers, were not close enough to see or hear the victims or did not hear about it from someone else. They were unaware of the situation until well after it had concluded.
“I think a lot of universities are looking at what other technologies are out there and what are the ways to retrofit existing technology,” Magara said. “Can there be a better use of existing fire alarms? In our case, the incident was over so quickly, there was no further danger in about two minutes.”
Magara believes that if everyone in all buildings could have been alerted to the shooting, campus officials would have told people to “stay where you are.”
Tags: A/V Notification, Mass Notification, Speakers and Strobes
Posted in Audible/Visible Notification, Cover Features, Education, Mass Notification, Winter 2008
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