The Seahawk

Issue date: 9/6/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Sarah McKone | THE SEAHAWK Meteorologist Tom Matheson gives a presentation to the Crisis Decision Team and the Emergency Operations Group. School officials had a drill last week to review the Hurricane Operation Plan.

By Friday afternoon on the eve of Labor Day Weekend, Category Two Hurricane Diantha was heading north towards Wilmington, bringing with her rain, 96 mile per hour winds and the threat of severe thunderstorm activity. The Crisis Decision Team and Emergency Operations Group met to discuss their options, assisted by a large tracking map of the hurricanes path.

"It looks like we're going to get pretty hammered," said UNCW emergency management coordinator Suzanne Blake. Blake then asked how the group felt the storm would affect class schedules.

"We would have made the decision to cancel classes for Friday, I'm certain" said emergency operations coordinator Sharon Boyd.

This entire scenario-the hurricane, its path, the storm statistics and the class cancellation-was supplied by UNCW's Department of Environmental Health & Safety.

Hurricane Diantha was a fictional hurricane, created so that the members of the CDT and EOG could run through UNCW's Hurricane Operation Plan. The teams will react to the fictional hurricane like they would to a real one, following the guidelines in the HOP. After the meeting, they will update the HOP as they see fit, so that it will be current when the next real hurricane strikes.

This two hour meeting was held in the Fisher Student Center's Masonboro Island Room Friday, Aug. 31. Blake worked with Director of Environmental and Health Safety Stan Harts to coordinate the meeting. The two have worked together many times--most notable among their achievements was the $100,000 in grants they helped the university obtain from FEMA to make UNCW a disaster resistant university.

During last week's meeting, Blake and her team facilitated discussion among the main campus leaders who make up the CDT and EOG, including Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Pat Leonard, Associate Director of Residence Life Larry Wray, Manager of News and Media Services Dana Fischetti, Assistant to the Chancellor for Marketing and Communications Cindy Lawson, as well as Blake, Harts and Boyd.

The annual meeting is one of the ways UNCW prepares for the threatening hurricane season every summer.

"From 1996 to 2005 annual cost from hurricane damage was 19 billion dollars," said Wilmington's Warning Coordination Meteorologist Tom Matheson during his presentation. "The question is: Are you ready?" Matheson then spoke about the 2007 hurricane season, reminding the members at the meeting that the National Weather Service has called for seven to ten hurricanes.

UNCW's new Emergency Web site, www.uncw-campus.info, was also unveiled at the meeting. This site was created by PIER systems, PIER short for Public Information and Emergency Response. This new site does not involve any software or hardware. According to PIER's Web site PIER sites can be accessed from any computer with internet capabilities.

"If our power goes out, contact with this company can remain open via phone," PIER said. "Any message UNCW needs to send to its students can be posted immediately."

The members at the meeting discussed how they would deal with emergency situations Blake created for the exercise: building fires, damaged dormitories and flooded roads. Warren Lee, Director of New Hanover County's Department of Emergency Management, elaborated on the possibility of an I-40 reversal.

Chief of Police David Donaldson discussed how the university would deal with the discovery of an unidentified dead body, which could be a student, on campus after the storm. The group even expanded upon how they plan to deal with situations that occurred during past hurricanes, such as students breaking into dorms for shelter, or angry parents calling UNCW demanding more information.

All the emergency situations discussed were fictional, but the Hurricanes Operation Plan the members used to tackle the issues was not. It is available online on UNCW's Environmental Health & Safety Web site, www.uncw.edu/ba/safety.

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