SAMANTHA BLONS
Assistant News Editor
While most students were still sleeping early Sunday morning, top university officials gathered at the Thornton Administrative Center to respond to the Malibu fire that was heading toward campus.
The Emergency Operations Committee (EOC,) a handful of top university administrators who lead the school in times of crisis, began relocating faculty and staff to the Tyler Campus Center before 7:30 a.m. Soon afterward, they ordered students to evacuate to the TCC and Firestone Fieldhouse.
By 8 a.m., the Waves Café was full of students and faculty awaiting news.
Pepperdine Executive Vice President Gary Hanson said the university’s preplanning and evacuations worked extremely well.
“I think this is one of the worst threats we’ve ever had, if not the worst threat we’ve ever had,” Hanson said.
A new high-tech emergency alert system the EOC implemented this fall was tested Sunday as well. Students began receiving phone calls and text messages from the InstaCom notification system around 7:45 a.m.
Chief Administrative Officer Phil Phillips said the system is a “fine tool” to add to Pepperdine’s emergency plan.
Senior Erin Herrera said while she thinks the voicemail system was effective, the text messaging system wasted her time during the emergency.
“Each notification that was sent came through in six to eight text messages,” she said. “And they were jumbled, not even coming in in order.”
Phillips said the EOC is aware of the problem and is working with InstaCom to make the texts send consecutively.
About 30 percent of the university population, including faculty, staff and students, had added cell phone numbers to their Wavenet accounts, activating the InstaCom system.
“Even though not everyone was in the system, enough people got [the message] that the word then spread by word of mouth very effectively.”
10-24-2007