Administrators Satisfied with Response to Tropical Storm

By Josh Salman: Managiaging Editor

UNF administrators and UPD were pleased with the university’s response to Tropical Storm Fay, which lingered through Jacksonville Aug. 20 – Aug. 23.

The university recently installed a new outdoor and indoor notification system for all emergencies that came as a response to last semester’s bomb scare. A new emergency text message system was also put into place this semester.

Due to advanced warning of the storm, the UNF Crisis Management Team didn’t feel the need to use the outdoor notification system, but indoor notification was implemented Aug. 21 when a tornado warning threatened the campus housing area, administrators said.

“We are definitely learning as we go,” UPD Chief Mark Foxworth said. “But last year has improved our emergency response system this year, and the experiences we face this year will improve our response next year.”

The university didn’t implement the text message system, which is actually owned by the city, because there weren’t enough minutes available to reach all 16,000 students, Foxworth said.

However, if the emergency was more timely and required an immediate evacuation, Foxworth said the university would have sent out the messages and worried about the minutes available later.

“There’s a lot of things the Crisis Management Team is doing that wasn’t necessarily needed for the storm,” said Shari Shuman, vice president of Administration and Finance, and chairwoman of the emergency response team. “Each crisis is so unique, and there really wasn’t a lot of similarities between the bomb threat and the storm.”

Since UNF is located in an area that experiences storms similar to Fay quite frequently, the university was more prepared for this type of situation,” Shuman said.

She attributes the fast action to the improvements in communication between different departments at the university.

UNF was in an intersession, so no students were attending classes and a campus evacuation wasn’t required, but administrators did have to reschedule housing move-in, and they had Chartwells feeding all of the students who had already moved into their dorms, Shuman said.

Shuman was also pleased with the work accomplished after the storm to ensure campus would be safe for classes, she said.

E-mail Josh Salman at managing@unfspinnaker.com