Aiming to provide a safe and informed campus for students and employees, UFV created UFV Alert, an emergency notification system to keep participants updated during an emergency. Last week they tested the system.
On October 20 at 10:20 a.m. a voluntary earthquake drill was held at UFV campuses with the hopes to better prepare students and faculty for any future complications or disasters. The drill coincided with ShakeOut, an annual international earthquake drill and not only took place on campus, but across B.C. and internationally. The drill also facilitated a test of UFV’s emergency notification system, UFV Alert.
UFV Alert is an system that was set up to send text messages, emails, or voice messages to cellular devices that will alert participants about anything from power outages to earthquakes.
Dave Pinton, UFV’s director of communications said that “The idea with crisis communications is to get the right information to the right people at the right time, and then to keep people updated. It takes many channels to achieve this goal.”
The alert system is intended to predominantly be used for weather-related closures or emergencies. It will keep faculty, staff, and students informed with important information about the situation.
“Registration is way up for UFV Alert — up 250 per cent from September 2015,” said Pinton. “We now have 2045 people registered to receive a text, email, or voice message — or all three.”
British Columbia is located in one of the most seismically active regions in the world with more than 3,000 earthquakes occurring every year. Even though most of the earthquakes are too small to be felt, the risk of a major earthquake is imminent and it is better to be well prepared then to think it’s never going to happen.
ShakeOut took place for British Columbians as a way to practice safety procedures to decrease damage or injuries caused by an earthquake. The university runs drills like this one so as many people as possible know what to do during an emergency.
Sign-up for the service and instructions can be found at fraservalley.bbcportal.com/Entry
With files from Joel Robertson-Taylor
