Author: Rachel Stober
Last Wednesday night, the Santa Ana winds caused most of campus to lose power until mid-day Thursday and prompted the evacuation of four dorms after a downed power line sparked a fire on Fiji Hill. Many aspects of Occidental’s response were admirable: the dining facilities made excellent use of perishable foods with the little power available to them, Emmons Health Center was operational the next morning and the library made a valiant effort to stay at least partially open and provide whatever resources they could. However, the lack of information available to students the night of the power outage and poor communication as to what they were supposed to do made for a hectic and potentially unsafe environment. The events following the windstorms and fire revealed flaws in Occidental’s emergency preparedness and evacuation procedures that urgently need to be addressed in the event of more serious disasters.
As the wind howled outside, rumors about the status and severity of the situation as well as the required course of action spread like wildfire, ranging from stories of hospitalized students to an immediate required school-wide evacuation. In reality, only the four residence halls closest to the fire—Stearns, East Norris, Braun and Haines—were evacuated to Rush Gymnasium, and no damages or injuries were reported. But without any authoritative source of information, students were left to their own devices. In addition to the confusion experienced in the residence halls, students living off campus were left without any word from Campus Safety or the ability to ask a Resident Advisor.
Even the RAs on campus did not have all the answers. RAs are trained to handle an array of emergencies, but not power outages, windstorms or fires that require more than straight forward and immediate evacuation. RAs in dorms that were not evacuated to Rush Gymnasium were told simply to try to keep the doors shut and the students in. Instructions like those are not sufficient for RAs when one hundred excited and confused students suddenly look to them for answers.
The RAs for residence halls evacuated to Rush Gym were faced with an equally challenging situation of essentially looking after several hundred students with almost no organizational oversight. Given their lack of training and professional assistance, the RAs made an extremely commendable effort to take care of their residents, and if not truly taking the lead, at least acting as symbols of authority for students’ reassurance.
In the future, RAs should be trained on how to handle power outages and a wider variety of fire emergencies to prevent a situation of the blind leading the blind, for both the students’ and their own sake.
But it should not be, and is not, solely an RA’s responsibility to act as a source of information during times of crisis. As a part of yearly clearance, all students must enroll in the college’s emergency notification system, OxyAlert, a rapid e-mail, text messaging and voice mail system for students, parents, faculty and staff. Indeed it was utilized, but not until after 2:30 p.m. the next afternoon, when OxyAlert sent out a brief message stating that power was out, and that students should remain in place and await a decision about classes the next day.
This vague and untimely message is a poor utilization of OxyAlert, a system that surely costs the school a substantial amount of money. Campus Safety should have taken advantage of this resource, and at a minimum sent out text messages telling students what to do to remain safe, and which dorms were being evacuated. Campus Safety’s website states that one of their three future improvements for fire safety is evacuation exercises using the mass notification systems.
Last week’s events have shown that this a matter that demands immediate attention, not a spot on the end of a to-do list. Evacuation using the mass notification systems should be on the “currently improving” list; a more appropriate future improvement would be to work on a notification system that could separately alert individual residence halls.
Last week’s events should serve as both a learning experience and a wake-up call. Campus Safety and administration can be thankful that the extent of the damage was only some stress and confusion.
If communication and evacuation procedures are not improved, we might not be so lucky the next time disaster strikes.
Rachel Stober is an undeclared first-year. She can be reached at stober@oxy.edu.
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