By snoadmin
According to Housing & Residential Life Director Stan Olin and University Police Chief Jack Pearson, Cal State Long Beach was testing two emergency notification systems last weekend.
Olin said that their staff was looking at automated cell phone notification systems Friday.
“Apparently, you can buy a program to do that,” Olin said. “We’re running down that path ourselves, so perhaps we can get everybody in the residence halls on a system [so] that we can get to [them] via their cell phones.”
Pearson said that the university police already have an automatic notification system that is pre-programmed with various emergency messages. However, the system is currently only available to key personnel on campus.
“We are looking at if we have the capacity to establish a voluntarily enrolled program on this where faculty, staff and students can give us their cell phone numbers and we’ll program that into the system,” Pearson said. “We’re not sure if it has that capacity yet, but we are looking into that.”
Pearson also said that their staff is considering installing emergency boxes in every building on campus on every floor. The box is 3-by-3 inches and a siren sounds from it if there is an emergency.
“It gives both an audio and a visual message,” Pearson said. “It would actually print out [in] LED lights what the emergency is and what the action to be taken is.”
Pearson told students that they had a public announcement speaker system on campus, but he said that it only caused more confusion.
“Because of the construction of the campus, the sound generally bounced off the buildings and echoed, so it was very difficult if you were outside a building to understand what was being said,” Pearson said. “It would not penetrate inside the building so the people inside could hear.”
Pearson said that there is also a building marshal program through which multiple employees in each building are notified in case of an emergency. The marshals then spread the information to the other students, faculty and staff on campus.
Pearson also commented that the campus police were trained to use automatic rifles in case a gunman attacks with an automatic weapon. If a bomb were planted on campus, Pearson said that campus police would call in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s bomb squad.
According to Pearson, the campus would not automatically shut down if there were a shooting on campus because the gunman could shoot the people evacuating the buildings.
“What you evaluate is whether or not there is an ongoing threat,” Pearson said. “Problem is, if you’ve got someone on the loose with a firearm, do you really want to send students, faculty and staff out in the open where they [can] become a target for a sniper?”
Pearson also told students that the main emergency command center in the Horn Center would serve as the headquarters for coordination in an emergency situation. The Mobile Command Center would also be available.
“Based on the levels of communication that we’ve got, it is next to impossible for us to lose communication with the outside world,” Pearson said.
