Charles Nailen/The Hoya Georgetown’s Emergency Response Team has prepared several possible scenarios for a coordinated emergency response.

University administrators notified students of four possible emergency scenarios via e-mail on Friday – gathering in, shelter-in-place, building evacuation and campus evacuation – as part of the university’s revised Emergency Management Plan, a multidimensional and unilateral response to crisis situations on campus or in the Washington, D.C., area.

In order to provide channels of preparation and communication during an emergency, a Building and Floor Marshal Program has been instituted. While the program has been implemented in residence halls and apartment complexes, Director of Housing Operations Bob Robinson said that the Building Marshal Program for academic and administrative buildings is not yet fully employed.

“Floor marshals are modeled after the hall director and R.A. system,” Robinson said at a meeting with student press yesterday. “Building marshals are the equivalent of hall directors and floor marshals are the equivalent of resident assistants. Residence hall plans are already in place, but implementing the marshal system in administrative buildings is the more ultimate goal.”

Now that residence halls have the Building and Floor Marshal Program in place, Robinson said the Emergency Response Team will work on administrative and academic buildings.

“Training is ongoing with a building by building approach. We come together and run through the procedures on a more widespread approach. We began by training building marshals who will train their floor marshals who will in turn pass that information along to their occupants,” he said.

The first emergency situation, “gathering in,” would not respond to an immediate emergency at Georgetown but instead give students the opportunity to meet and find information about a national or regional emergency, such as Sept. 11. There are four designated sites – ICC Galleria, Sellinger Lounge, the edical Center Research Building Auditorium and the Pierce Reading Room in Lauinger Library.

Shelter-In-Place would require students to seek refuge inside their residence hall, apartment, townhouse or the closest available facility, when notified by building marshals or a campus alert horn, which will sound in a series of five second blasts for 15 minutes. After hearing the alert horn, a steam whistle with a two-mile sound radius, students would be instructed to close windows and doors and turn off air conditioning and heating units.

Robinson said that students could keep extra supplies and water if they wanted, but that the university would be able to provide water and other essentials. “These kits have ponchos, emergency blankets, light sticks and other basic emergency tools and these are stored in bulk kits in every building,” he said. “Resident assistants also have what we call `evac packs’ that would be used in the event of an emergency that required sheltering-in or evacuation.”

Friday’s e-mail also alerted students to a five-minute test of the campus alert horn, which is scheduled for 1:05 p.m. today. The Roam Secure Alert Network notified Georgetown residents about the drill.

A building evacuation would be signaled with the internal building alarm and the ERT recommended that students familiarize themselves with evacuation routes for their own residence as well as campus buildings that they frequently use.

The ERT also said that, however unlikely, a campus evacuation would almost certainly be carried out on foot. Students would be notified by voicemail, e-mail and internal building alarms. While the location of the evacuation site would depend upon the location of the emergency, the most likely evacuation would be north on Canal Road towards Maryland and the Interstate 495 and away from the city center.

Robinson said that the university has established “agreements of understanding” with other area colleges in Washington and the outlying Maryland and Virginia regions to temporarily house Georgetown students in the event of a campus evacuation.

“We don’t have a set place to where we would evacuate, as the nature and location of the situation would determine where we would go, but we have several possible sites where we have mutual agreements where we could evacuate to,” he said.

Although the current Homeland Security threat assessment is at “orange,” which asks students to remain vigilant and informed, a code “red” would require all students to display identification with a university-issued cardholder. In addition, the university would staff a 24-hour emergency operations center, limit building access to a single point of entry and require visitors to sign in and sign out while displaying a visitor identification card on campus.

In an emergency, the Vice President of University Safety will administer emergency planning under the direction of the President from Emergency Operation Centers in New South Hall (primary) and Healy Hall (secondary).

“The emergency operations center serves as a clearinghouse for information about the disaster. It is where recommendations will be made as to how to respond to the crisis, but it will not be first-responders – those are police, fire, paramedic, etc.,” Robinson said.

The Emergency Management Plan includes 14 Emergency Support Teams that are assigned specific duties, including Transportation and International Affairs. Robinson said that the university keeps overseas students updated about necessary developments but that recalling students to the United States would depend upon future developments in world affairs.

“Overseas programs have been working and checking with the State Department to ensure that the safety and security of overseas students is maintained,” he said. “We can’t really predict what we’re going to do because it really depends on what happens in international affairs, but we would make sure that we followed the necessary precautions to ensure the safety of overseas students.”

Robinson said that now that current protocols are in place, resident assistants can begin to engage in discussions with residents about what to do during an emergency to better coordinate emergency response.

In addition to working with Metropolitan Police Department, the university has several representatives on the district’s Local Emergency Planning Council, Robinson said. The ERT also keeps appraised of non-specific alerts from the Department of Homeland Security.

“Of course, we get some of our news the same way everyone else does, from CNN and other news media,” he said.

Robinson and Associate Dean of Student Life Jeanne Lord maintained that the university has created the necessary means of communication and information distribution for emergency preparedness, including a website that is constantly updated to give accurate information 24-hours a day.

“We’ve tried to increase awareness about these procedures to the best of our ability,” Robinson said. “We’ve sent out several e-mails over the past month with regard to the different levels of security and the different scenarios for each emergency and we’ve had two town hall meetings – one in the evening and one during the lunch hour – to give people an opportunity to get informed,” Robinson said.

Gloria Lacap, director of events and protocol, stressed that all individuals must remain informed of proper emergency procedures in order to ensure safety during and after an emergency.

“We are a community,” she said. “So it takes everyone’s involvement to make sure that in an emergency we respond in the right way so as to ensure safety.”