UL is ahead of the state’s deadline for public colleges and universities to have emergency alerting systems in place by June 30 next year.
For the past few months, UL officials have been developing new alerting features — free text messaging service, enhancing phone hotline capabilities, and a weather radios to broadcast alerts across campus via a Local Area Emergency alert signal in cooperation with the National Weather Service.
“The pieces of the puzzle have been placed,” said Joey Pons, UL’s environmental health and safety director. “We’re working on a protocol to test all the pieces together.”
That emergency drill may not be before students return for classes in January because of the coordination needed among local parish emergency, the National Weather Service in Lake Charles, and other agencies, Pons explained.
Following the shootings on the Virginia Tech campus earlier this year, the Board of Regents created a four-pronged approach to analyzing and improving campus security on the state’s college campuses.
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Marsha Sills
msills@theadvertiser.com