GCSU revamps emergency plan

Have you ever wondered what would happen if an armed intruder came into your class? What if there was a chemical spill during lab? What would happen if one of your classmates had a seizure during an exam? The answers to those questions and more are in the Emergency Preparedness and Occupational Safety Guide, EPOS for short.

Justin Gaines, coordinator of environmental health and occupational safety, recently reworked the existing informational flip book into a 30 page detailed document with a corresponding laminated guide for quick and easy reference.

“I wanted to publish the whole thing and give a 5×8 three ring binder to everyone, but the budget would not allow it because it was fairly expensive,” said Gaines. “So what I ended up doing was posting that online and then I created a guide, just a quick reference of eight different things that may occur on campus.”

Mailed to all members of the faculty and staff of GCSU, the brightly colored guide references eight different possible on-campus emergencies. The four most common, Gaines said, are fire, severe weather, chemical spills and medical emergencies.

“Severe weather is the most prominent thing that would happen on campus,” Gaines said. “Fire is always a problem whenever you have a lot of people in the building. Medical emergencies, we answer those just about every week. Not many people know what to do in a chemical spill, but we have chemicals on campus for which people need to know what to do.”

The four additional emergencies included on the quick reference guide are bomb threats, armed intruder, utility failure and psychological crisis or substance abuse. In reference to the psychological crisis and substance abuse, Gaines said that GCSU wouldn’t have the students they have today ten years ago due to the advancements in medicine.

“Medicine has advanced so much to where students can now be stabilized through medicine,” said Gaines. “But we’re seeing an increase in psychological crisis and substance abuse through medication, because these students may have been on this medicine through their high school years but decide they want a fresh start freshman year, choosing to stop taking their medications.”

As far as armed intruders and bomb threats, Gaines is happy to say that GCSU has yet to run into that situation but considering the “hot topic” these situations have become, Gaines said that it is still very important to equip every faculty and staff member with the necessary steps to keep them and their students safe.

The EPOS guide also includes page citations that corresponds each situation to the more detailed explanation online at http://info.gcsu.edu/intranet/epos. The original thirty page EPOS is designed in a question format with just about any situation you can imagine happening including a rare Georgia earthquake.

But how much did this all cost? The guide is a full color, laminated reference sheet and laminated for durability, according to Gaines.

“This was about $1.50 a page but with 1000 copies it was $1500,” said Gaines. “The way I wanted to do it in its entirety, it was going to cost around $5000. $5.00 per person. Ultimately, I’m hoping that next year we’ll have the funds for this. What I recommend everyone doing is just keeping it close by. Mainly for the phone number, but also to read it and familiarize yourself with it.”

Ultimately, Gaines hopes that everyone, faculty, staff and students, can become familiar with the EPOS whether through the guide or through the Web site.

“I tell everybody Action is quicker than reaction,” said Gaines. “I always recommend that everyone put our number in their phone which is 478-445-4400.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Feb 13 2009. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry