Rumbles in the ground, severe weather storms, gas leak explosions and pandemic outbreaks are all possible disasters that can strike in the blink of an eye and affect the lives of thousands of Carleton students.
But students shouldn’t worry, because Carleton has a number of responses in place if any “apocalyptic” disasters were to occur on or near campus, according to Allan Burns, Carleton’s director of university safety.
Since Ottawa is on a fault line, one such disaster is the possibility of a significant earthquake, Burns said.
Ottawa-Gatineau, for example, is the third urban area in Canada most at risk of an earthquake, according to Quakes in the Capital, the Ottawa Citizen’s interactive online model assembled by scientists at the federal government and Carleton.
On average, there’s an earthquake in the area every five days, according to the model. But the most recent earthquake that comes to mind for most people from Ottawa and the surrounding area is the 5.0 magnitude quake experienced on June 23, 2010.
“We haven’t seen anything yet that has been much more than a pretty good shake but the possibilities are always there,” Burns said.
But such catastrophes aren’t limited to extreme weather and geological occurrences. In the case of a pandemic outbreak, the university would respond with a pandemic plan, which many organizations started following when SARS became a major concern in 2003, Burns said.
At Carleton, the pandemic plan includes a process the university would follow to determine how it would continue to operate as people stop coming to work and students stop coming to class because they’re ill.
“We know that through the plan, we can continue to provide services by taking resources and putting them to the key areas,” Burns said. “We also know that once we get to a certain period, we’d have to close the university and not conduct business anymore.”
Carleton has an emergency management plan (EMP) that governs the university’s response to all emergencies on campus, including natural disasters, according to Burns. Disasters are categorized according to their type and the kind of impact they might have.
A category one disaster, for example, is something “very small” that can be handled by staff on house, Burns said. A category three, on the other hand, is something the university isn’t capable of handling themselves. In that case, Carleton would bring in external resources and emergency response teams from the city to assist with the disaster, he added.
During the EMP, all disasters are broken down into three steps: the actual response, business continuity, and disaster recovery, Burns said.
“If [an identifiable] disaster happens . . . I’m designated as the incident commander for the university,” Burns said. “My responsibility is to go and start setting up the things that are going to deal with it.”
Once outside resources arrive on campus, there’s an integrated incident command process that takes place where the commanders from all the different services get together to decide who takes charge, Burns said.
“We’re all set up to work with each other and work in a unified incident command process so that all agencies are aware of each other and are supporting one another throughout the process,” he said.
Emergency operation centres are also set up to gather the leaders and make a plan for the impending crisis, Burns said.
The centers are chosen at the time of the emergency so it would depend on what was happening and where. Then the “leaders” would be directed towards that centre.
Carleton has an emergency notification system (ENS) in place to send out messages to students and faculty when an emergency occurs. Messages could be sent via email (through Carleton connect accounts) and/or text, and all desktop computers lock down forcing users to read the emergency notice.
The university is working on raising awareness about the text services so all students can be notified immediately, Burns said. The emergency service would instruct students what to do and where to go for their safety.
“If we need to evacuate a residence building, then the business continuity plans kick in and will tell us where [students] need to go and where to assemble,” Burns said.
Students shouldn’t count on the tunnels as a safe spot during a disaster. The university will have everyone evacuated and to a safe location as quickly as possible, he said.
“We can look to other people that we have agreements with to support us for housing; we can go to hotels, set up cots in the recreation area,” he said.
If students aren’t able to find proper housing immediately, Burns said feeding anyone stuck on campus isn’t a problem and the city would also respond to assist.
As for shutting the university down completely, that’s something administration wouldn’t do unless it was “absolutely necessary,” Burns said.
“We have plans in place on how we can continue to operate through [disasters] . . . in some cases we might have to stop a particular program for a small period of time until we can get things set up for it to continue,” Burns said.
“It would take a fairly significant disaster . . . or pandemic, for us to close the university,” he said. “Universities are very prepared for these situations.”
