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When an emergency occurs or a disaster strikes, Emmanuel College seeks to maintain a safe and secure campus for all students, faculty, staff and visitors.
Campus preparedness is more than preparing for emergencies. The central goal of the process is to create a campus environment that is safe and secure every day. A comprehensive emergency preparedness plan should address a wide range of issues and concerns beyond emergency planning, including workplace violence, occupational safety and environmental management.
A key element of an effective response is the ability to rapidly assess the impact of a disaster or emergency, and communicate this information to key personnel. These assessments provide Emmanuel College administrators and staff with information on the needs of the community that are essential to planning an effective response. The rapid assessment process identifies immediate human needs such as food, water, shelter, health and medical and the extent of damage to infrastructure such as utilities, buildings, communications and transportation in affected areas.
It also provides the geographic and programmatic impact boundaries; current status of transportation, communications, medical, and utility infrastructure; usable access points to the disaster area; casualty, sheltering, and mass care information; status of critical facilities and major resource needs. The rapid assessment identifies emergency actions necessary to preserve life and property in the affected areas. This same information is also used to create situational awareness of the disaster or emergency's impact and communicate that information to key staff to formulate response, recovery and information strategies.
Effective preparedness requires ongoing communications and training of essential personnel so the members of the Emmanuel College community will understand their own responsibilities and be prepared should a major disaster or emergency event occur.
This video was developed by The Boston Consortium for Higher Education and Yale University. We thank them for allowing us to utilize this tool to help enhance Emmanuel's emergency preparedness program.
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