I spent part of today pulling together notes for our annual emergency preparedness meeting (Weds.,May 23, 2-5 p.m., Clinical Sciences Auditorium). Preparedness is important and plans and procedures do change from year to year, so the annual exercise is a good way to get people thinking about the upcoming hurricane season and emergency preparation in general. But I still think the meeting may be longer and more grueling than some of the tropical storms I’ve experienced in Galveston. wink
There are two new communication capabilities being rolled out this summer that I find pretty exciting. One is an off-site backup to our email system, something we’ve not had before. If we go offline for whatever reason, say 22 ft. of saltwater in the general vicinity of our email servers, pvaldes@utmb.edu (or whatever your address is) will still work and be accessible via a web interface. You’ll be able to get and send email from the comfort of your hotel room in Las Vegas, or wherever the evacuation fairy takes you.
The other new exciting item is something called “reverse 911.” This will give anyone with a listing in the campus directory—you, me, students, other staff, faculty, contractors—the ability to sign up to have emergency messages pushed to us at our device/location of choice. I might want a recorded message sent to my desk, to my personal cell phone or home; I might choose to have a text message sent to my phone or non-UTMB email account. Maybe I want a page or a fax. This system should support all of the above, and give users the ability to choose what they prefer.
The IEPOs and Information Services have been working hard on these new tools, and the systems should go live in the next few weeks. They’ll likely be mentioned at the meeting tomorrow, but don’t expect a lot of details yet. They’re coming.
If you find that you can’t get enough pre-hurricane season news and information, the City of Galveston is hosting its community-wide hurricane town hall meeting May 30 at the Island Community Center, 4700 Broadway, beginning at 6 p.m. Details are online…