In the event of a fire at Northwest College, students and employees are instructed to call 911 and activate the fire alarm system; in the event of a shooter at the college, activating a fire alarm is something they shouldn’t do.

“In a shooter situation, (activating a fire alarm) is a tactic that someone might use to get people out of hiding,” said NWC Security Officer Lee Blackmore. “That is one time you can ignore the fire alarm.”

In the wake of last month’s short-lived scare when a gun was found in a backpack at the college, Blackmore was on hand at the NWC Board of Trustees meeting on Monday to explain and answer questions about the college’s emergency response plan. 

Under the direction of NWC President Stefani Hicswa, the college developed an emergency response guide, which provides step-by-step information specific to several different emergency scenarios, such as acts of violence, a bomb threat, an explosion, a fire, hazardous material, medical emergencies, and weather and natural disasters. 

The guide, first distributed to employees in early 2014, is provided to employees, students and the public.

Blackmore said the first step toward keeping students and employees safe is making sure they fill in emergency information for their buildings, such as locating and writing down the locations of the nearest exits, fire alarms and fire extinguishers.

Employees also write down the name of the captain for each building, who is trained in what to do in the case of an emergency. In addition, they locate and write down the assembly areas where students and employees should gather after the evacuation of a building, as well as areas of refuge within their buildings.

Blackmore said it is important for them to write those things down to help make them more aware of their surroundings and emergency procedures. 

Without that, they may walk by an exit or a fire extinguisher every day but be unaware of where it is when they need it.

For instance, people often bypass the nearest exit during emergencies while on their way to one they are more familiar with, he said. 

“We tell our instructors to get their classes together, make sure they’re all there, stuff like that,” he said. “They are also conduits of information. They know if there are problems, they can get that information to us, so we can get help to them.”

Each building captain undergoes two hours of uncompensated, voluntary training in order to know what to do in an emergency, Blackmore said. 

Emergency systems

Northwest College has two emergency systems that can be activated to notify students and employees about an emergency, and a third is nearly complete.

• The Rave Mobile Safety System, a mass emergency alert system, is the most available and the easiest to activate, Blackburn said. Through that system, NWC students and employees receive information instantly and simultaneously about any emergency situation through texts to their cell phones or other mobile devices.

Hicswa said students formerly were asked to opt in to the system. Now, they are automatically enrolled in the system unless they opt out. 

Too often, “Students don’t opt into anything,” she said. 

• Big Voice is a PA announcement system installed in classroom buildings and on the NWC campus. That system would be used to broadcast warnings and information in the event of an emergency on campus, Blackmore said. 

Big Voice is available in all but one classroom building, and that building will be added soon, Hicswa said. 

Hicswa said Big Voice can be heard on the Northwest campus, but won’t alert anyone who isn’t on campus at the time. That is where the Rave Mobile Safety Alert System comes in. 

“You can get a text wherever you are, so a student who is not on campus will not leave home until they know more,” she said. 

• A third system will be added soon, Blackmore said. That system works off the Internet, over phones and computers. 

“If their phone has been chosen, the message still comes up and the phone still rings, even if they’re talking on it,” he said. 

Emergency training

An Incident Command Team has been established on campus to deal with emergency situations. The team consists of the president, vice presidents, deans, director of security, facilities director, finance director (that position is vacant), residence life director, computing services director and whoever else the incident commander determines necessary for a particular situation, Hicswa said.

A campus telephone number is available for students and employees to call to advise the team about any emergency. Calls to that number go to all members of the team, and the first person to answer that call begins putting emergency procedures into place for the specific emergency. 

Blackmore said emergency training drills take place occasionally, with team members and building captains following procedures for the specific emergency outlined. 

Hicswa said Blackmore establishes challenging scenarios for the drills. For instance, she said the last training scenario started with calls and Facebook posts about a bomb exploding on campus, but it was determined later during the drill to be a boiler explosion instead of a bomb. 

Blackmore praised Hicswa for getting the emergency response program up and going. 

“I kept talking about it, but it kept getting put on the back burner. When Stefani got here, she did something about it.”