At Mercy College, there are three level of emergency situation covered by the emergency plan. These comprise of level three (serious fires, hurricanes, explosions); level two (large fire, civil disturbance, hazmat incident, outage which affect multiple campus building); and level one (fire alarms, water leaks, electrical outages). Mercy College Safety Department (MCSD) maintains or keeps the emergency plan (MCERG, 2011).
Information concerning emergency plan is conveyed to students and employees through various channels. First, there is hot line number to allow people within the college get notifications or updates. Second, information is distributed via internet. Information is placed in the college homepage. Third, public radio stations are used to disseminate all information related to emergency (Kowalski, 2010). In addition, there is emergency management plan that include: Emergency response guide, emergency operations guide, campus safety teams, emergency operations center, and emergency management team.
Emergency Response Guide institutes the procedures and policy for employees and students on how to respond in the event of an emergency. Emergency Operations Guide creates the policy, organizational framework, and procedures to respond, control, as well as recover from a disaster. Campus Safety Teams helps in building emergency response and evacuations. Emergency Operations Center acts as operations and communication center during an emergency. Lastly, Emergency Management Team manages the logistical and operational requirements in situations of an emergency (MCERG, 2011).
At Mercy College, emergency plan is updated on a daily basis. This is done via electronic notifications on the college homepage. The emergency plan is incorporated with the emergency or disaster plan of the neighboring community, through placing emergency information on community wide email. Moreover, public radio stations are used to disseminate information to the local community.
References
Kowalski, K. M. (2010). A human component to consider in your emergency management plans: the critical incident stress factor. Safety Science, 5(2), 4-6. doi:10.1016/0925-7535(94)00072-B
Mercy College Emergency Response Guide. (2011). Retrieved from https://www.mercy.edu/PDFFiles/emergencyresponse.pdf
