Cal Poly Pomona is preparing to “drop, cover and hold on” as part of the Great California Shakeout.
The campus will participate in the annual earthquake drill on Thursday, Oct. 19, at 10:19 a.m. At the same time, the university community will test its Safety Alert System.
At 10:19 a.m., students, staff and faculty across campus should drop, cover and hold on for one minute, as well as assess their earthquake readiness.
This year, both the tower and the classroom sides of the CLA building (98) will be evacuated, with floor captains and building marshals leading inhabitants to designated safety zones.
“The importance of the Great Shakeout, for the most part, is to get the campus community as prepared as possible,” said Whitney Fields, executive director of Institutional Risk & Emergency Management. “We want to educate the students, staff and faculty on the different processes we have in place.”
For the Safety Alert test, students, staff and faculty will receive a brief test message on their cell, home and office phones, as well as an email. The test also will include the Alertus Desktop notification system, which sends safety messages to university-owned computers equipped with Alertus Software.
As part of the quarterly Safety Alert test, the university also will activate its emergency notification broadcast system via the campus phone system. A short announcement will simultaneously play through the speakerphones of all Cisco phones on campus.
The university also plans to tap into an existing PA system in the CLA building to alert students, staff and faculty, something that is different than what has been done in the past, Fields said.
“Practice makes perfect,” he said. “We want to make sure the campus is familiar with everything we need to do in an emergency.”
During an emergency situation involving campus safety, the Safety Alert System simultaneously sends out messages to phones, email, text/SMS and TTY/TDD devices. To ensure the receipt of Safety Alerts, the campus community is advised to update personal contact information on BroncoDirect. Make sure to enter your cell phone number under the phone type “Mobile” in order to receive critical text messages in an emergency.
The university’s first responders are trained and prepared, but every member of the campus community needs to know what to do in an earthquake. Learn more by visiting the Campus Safety website and reviewing the Emergency Procedures.
Prepare a disaster kit that contains the essentials: gloves, goggles, dust masks, a radio and flashlight, water and basic tools. It is recommended to have a kit in your office, dorm room, car and/or home.
For more information about how you can be earthquake prepared, check out this preparedness video.