Dear campus community member,

In order to maintain an effective emergency response and evacuation plan, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently completed a test including two components: an exercise and a drill. The test was designed to challenge our emergency response procedures and how we notify you of a threat to our campus community.

For the first part of the test, university personnel and emergency responders from a number of local agencies gathered for a functional exercise on Sept. 2 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Illinois Fire Service Institute. The exercise was unannounced, and those involved were presented with a scenario involving a civil disturbance that directly affected campus. The exercise tested various components of the Campus Emergency Operations Plan, including evacuation procedures.

The second component was a drill for which we initiated a test of our Illini-Alert emergency notification system on Sept. 6 at 10:05 a.m. The drill was announced ahead of time by a mass email to campus and an E-Week notice sent to faculty and staff. The Illini-Alert system sent an email to the campus email addresses of all active faculty, staff and students. Those who have registered alternate email addresses also received a notification. Those who have registered a cellphone number were sent a text message during this drill.

Illini-Alert messages are also posted to Facebook and Twitter and on campus websites through our Emergency Web Alert System. This multi-modal approach increases the speed and breadth of our distribution of emergency notifications, and it provides a robust communication engine that will continue to function successfully even if one system fails to work properly.

If you have not signed up to receive emergency messages through Illini-Alert, please visit http://emergency.illinois.edu/ to register.

To view the University’s emergency response and evacuation procedures, please visit http://go.illinois.edu/EmergencyResponse.

The University of Illinois Police Department is committed to maintaining a safe and secure campus environment where education, research and public service can flourish. We can only do so with the assistance of our community, and we hope this information is useful to all of our campus partners.

Sincerely,

Lieutenant Todd Short
University of Illinois Police Department
Office of Campus Emergency Management

   
     
   
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