WASHINGTON - Just days before the anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (DMineola) introduced a bill that would require universities to alert students of a threat no more than 30 minutes after it’s been confirmed. “Many believe if the students had been notified earlier, they might not have gone to class,” McCarthy said yesterday. (more…)

Since the tragic shootings that unfolded almost a year ago at Virginia Tech and the more recent events at Illinois State University, a major question has been renewed in the minds of the faculty and campus police of universities across the nation: How do we effectively protect our students from disasters on campus?

That job is currently of primary focus for the University of South Alabama’s police department, who is approaching new methods of contacting not only the faculty and staff at USA about emergencies and disasters but also alerting the very people they are sworn to protect-the students.

The original warning system that has been in place for years is called W.A.R.N., Wide Area Rapid Notification system, which is a service based in Virginia that works with universities to send out text messages, pages, e-mails and phone messages to faculty and staff in event of an emergency or disaster on campus. (more…)

The Pike County School System has plans to soon implement a warning system that will alert parents in the event of a school emergency.

“We hope that implementation will take place within the next couple of weeks,” Superintendent Mark Bazzell said. “We’re in the process of taking the data that we have at each school and reviewing that data and cleaning up that data so we have a good starting point for an initial test.” (more…)

Apr 07, 2008 @ 08:55 PM

By BILL ROSENBERGER

The Herald-Dispatch

HUNTINGTON — Jedd Flowers isn’t a teacher and he doesn’t run a school, but he plays a big part in the day-to-day operations of Cabell County Schools.

Flowers, the county’s communications director since 2000, is responsible not only for creating news releases and serving as a spokesperson, but he also oversees marketing, Web site content, emergency and internal communications, video and advertising. (more…)

After several months of collective funding collaboration, Cabell County has subscribed to the WEB Based WARN Public Notification solution. They begin training the 2nd week of April, 2008.В SWCG will maintain their ESL in zip code order to allow disperse call outs. WARNВ looks forward to working with Cabell County’s excellent staff in protecting their citizens.

Nicholas County 911 Director Joey DeRito, Clay County OES Director Leon Trescott and Nicholas County staff members RobinВ Evans andВ Linda Bragg received their WARN Public Notification Training April 3rd, 2008. The completed the certification process and are in the process of building their county police and fire plus other call groups. SWCG is maintaining thier all county and community call groups based on thier county’s ESL data.