Closing Remarks: Disaster Drill

I travel around the United States regularly, speaking to college and university presidents, trustees, deans, and senior administrators about risk management. One of the topics they repeatedly raise with me is the desire to learn lessons from others' losses and experiences: How did their peers manage in difficult times?

The catastrophic events surrounding Hurricanes Katrina and then Rita offer fertile ground for these lessons. I will leave it to government officials to debate the environmental, political, and economic lessons and instead will focus on actions campus leaders can take to prepare for crises. Whether a disaster is natural or man-made, of regional scope or more localized, sound preparation before a crisis strikes is vital to maintaining order during it.

Develop, refine, and rehearse

Most campus leaders have created crisis response plans but often tuck them away on a bookshelf, out of sight and out of mind until a disaster hits somewhere in the country. Then they dust off the plan, read it, and refile it until the next disaster strikes, when they repeat these steps. Campus leaders should break this cycle and instead periodically review, update, and rehearse their plans with emergency teams.

Effective plans enable people to manage events and resume normal operations as soon as possible. The alternative—closing for weeks or months—potentially can devastate external support, enrollment, academic programs, and research. By following a process that requires emergency teams to review and rehearse their plan, crisis team members learn to act quickly, effectively, and decisively rather than ponder what steps to take. And a rapid response improves an institution's chances for a full recovery.

Think the unthinkable but plan for the predictable

Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, officials at U.S. campuses inundated United Educators with requests for us to review their crisis plans. Many of those plans focused on potential terrorist events but ignored more predictable crises. One institution in an area susceptible to hurricanes had a great plan for responding to a terrorist attack but failed to outline what leaders should do in a storm.

Prudence suggests that a crisis plan address the steps officials should take during likely high-risk situations and then extrapolate those tasks to fit other events. Residential campuses should prepare for a residence hall fire, institutions with large athletics programs should plan for a significant disruption to a sports event, universities with extensive research facilities should anticipate the interruption of laboratory work, and so on. You get the idea.

Develop mutual aid agreements

In the days before and after Hurricane Katrina, many campus leaders took extensive measures to protect students, faculty, and staff members, which, of course, is the first priority during a crisis. Before the hurricane, for example, Loyola University of New Orleans worked with the American Red Cross to establish an evacuation shelter outside of the city for the campus community.
Such partnerships can be crucial during a crisis, and campus leaders should develop mutual aid agreements with sister institutions and other organizations. Those agreements might deal with the following questions:

• Can two institutions in different regions host each other's command center if one campus must be evacuated?
• Before another disaster strikes, can campuses formalize the student-enrollment agreements that spontaneously developed in the hurricane's wake?
• Where will campus officials house students if they must close a residence hall for a significant amount of time?
• Does a campus have an agreement with a bus company to evacuate students, faculty, and staff?
• Can similar campuses agree to support faculty members and researchers so teaching and research can continue?
• Have campus leaders made arrangements to place generators in key locations, provide for temporary sanitation, and supply potable water?
• Will another campus or business host an emergency Web site so an affected institution can communicate quickly?
• Where will sports teams, orchestras, theater troupes, and other groups practice and play if home facilities are unusable?

Stay up to date

Things change, but sometimes plans don't. United Educators has reviewed clients' crisis plans, which often included emergency call lists that were out of date and inaccurate. Further, many emergency call lists don't acknowledge standard disaster response technology, including satellite phones and text messaging using PDAs.

But even an accurate plan needs practice. Our crisis team meets several times a year to discuss our response strategies, and twice a year we conduct unannounced exercises to run through emergency scenarios—bomb scares, fires that emit toxic fumes, and other events that could render our offices unusable for two weeks. We revise and update our plan after each drill.

Keep a cool head and a warm heart

People who work on campuses—and those of us who support them—don't need to be told to be nurturing and compassionate; it's second nature. The overwhelming and heartfelt response to the students, faculty, and staff affected by Hurricane Katrina is a powerful example of education's warm heart. Countless institutions opened their doors to students and faculty from campuses that sustained damage, offered students online classes, donated proceeds from sports and campus events, raised funds and gave supplies, and replaced damaged equipment. The examples go on and on.

Although educators' hearts are in the right place, it can be hard to keep calm in the throes of a crisis. The following steps can help campus leaders respond with both warm hearts and cool heads:

• Implement a process to compile and keep up to date important information, including event details and names, addresses, and other contact information of students, faculty, staff, and volunteers who are involved.
• Be prepared to respond to cascading events. After the immediate threat of Hurricane Katrina passed, related crises—flooding, fires, looting, and health-related issues—followed.
• Designate separate liaisons to work with alumni and donors, the news media, families, leadership boards, faculty and staff, outside counsel, and insurance companies.
• Appoint a record keeper to track what happened, how the campus responded, who was involved, what the result was, and other key facts. This document will help strengthen future responses and reinforce lessons learned.

After any disaster, campus leaders need to take stock, learn from the experience, and improve their institution's ability to handle calamity and help their colleagues. At the very least, they need to evaluate how well their plans worked and make improvements rather than simply reshelve the documents with a hope that next time they'll use them more effectively. This cycle serves no one well; my wish is that we shift to a strategy that's based on perpetual preparation for whatever tomorrow brings.