All Hazards
The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities has adopted an All Hazards approach to emergency planning, response and recovery. This approach is meant to address all potential hazards and outline processes, organizational structures and relative functions required for a campus to prepare for contingencies, immediately respond to an event and then recover operational capability and get back to the primary mission of educating Minnesota!
There are three sections to the All Hazards Architecture. The first is the Emergency Preparedness Section of the All Hazards Plan. This document encompasses all of the processes and protocols for preparing for and responding to an emergency. It is functionally oriented and covers all 15 of the Emergency Service Functions outlined in the National response Framework. Campus authorities would be responsible for ensuring that, if necessary during any emergency, regardless of the nature of that emergency, the 15 functions are addressed.
The second pillar of the All Hazards Plan is the Crisis Intervention Section. This document is more procedurally oriented. It addresses any event which involves a criminal act and has the potential to result in catastrophic property damage or mass casualties. The tragic events at Virginia tech in 2007 pointed to a renewed focus on these types of events. This section deals with shootings and many other events such as suicide, rioting, bomb threats, and other types of individual acts in this category. This section further addresses terrorism events and addresses some basic security issues.
Continuity of Operations Planning (COOP) is the third section. This is an inventory of the major operations and components of a campus, from the business and registration functions to facilities and academics. It then provides strategies for recovering these functions and returning to the primary mission of the campus, which is obviously education. The sequence of events would be:1) an emergency occurs (regardless of the nature of that emergency), 20 the Emergency Operations Management team assembles, 3) develops a plan of action to stabilize the situation and then 4) completes and assessment of the impact of the event. If the results of the assessment indicate that there are critical functions of the campus impacted by the event, then initiation of the Continuity of Operations Plan is required (to recover whatever those functions were).
The result of having a comprehensive All Hazards Plan is that as many potential hazards are addressed as possible because the functions always remain the same regardless of the nature of the incident. While some types of incidents require specific actions, they all require some or most of the 15 Emergency Service Functions. There is no way to anticipate every contingency, but with comprehensive plans we can put in place the mechanisms to address anything that could happen.
A final area which the Fire/EMS/Safety Center is becoming more involved is overall campus security. Because it is intricately linked to emergency preparedness and response, the expertise for this critical function rests within the center. Personnel have the requisite education and tools to provide consultation on any and all security issues so contact the center anytime for assistance.
Contact Staff
Tracy Worsley, Emergency Preparedness Manager
Tracy.Worsley@so.mnscu.edu
651-649-5412
