Issue date: 8/26/08 Section: News

A new tornado siren installed near 9th St. Lot is one of several installed around Charleston during summer. (Megan Cruz/The Daily Eastern News)

Students returning to campus may think the university is trying to raise bees.

Two white, beehive-looking devices may get a chuckle from Eastern students, but they serve as one of the ways students are notified in an emergency.

Installed in late July, the two new sirens are located on Ninth Street just south of Roosevelt Avenue and by Williams Field on Fourth Street. Another siren was already located on Booth Library.

The locations of the new sirens and public address speakers had to be spread out to reach the entire campus.

"We had a consultant come in and analyze the coverage of the sound and the coordination of the sound from the three locations," President Bill Perry said.

The new locations were chosen because of the location of students on campus, he added.

Getting students to be aware of the emergency notification will be ongoing.

"We've worked through new student orientation to let (the students) know about this," Perry said. "You have to keep reminding people of these systems so they know when they hear a siren or a pulse tone that they need to react."

Dan Nadler, vice president for student affairs, said the sirens would be used for non-weather related emergencies.

"The new sirens are designed to alert the community about potential life threatening situations including active shooter situations, bomb threats and the like," he said.

The decision to activate the sirens would primarily be made by Nadler and University Police Chief Adam Due. If the university initiates the sirens, students would hear a pulse tone followed by a public address message, alerting the community about the emergency.

The siren signals students, faculty and staff to check their e-mail for additional information.

Testing of the sirens will take place the first Tuesday of every month at 10 a.m.

Besides the new sirens, students still have access to receiving emergency text messages, also known as Alert EIU, on their cell phones in case of an emergency.

Nadler said 3,700 people are currently signed up for the program.

He added the university would continue to promote the service. Students can register for Alert EIU by visiting eiu.edu/alerteiu.

The text messaging service will be tested once a semester.

Nadler said the first test message will go out to users on the morning of Sept. 2.

Another method the university is looking at informing students, faulty and staff is through the Eastern Illinois University Emergency Handbook.

The booklet will be posted in public places throughout campus, including classrooms, Perry said. An abbreviated version will also be available in the residence halls.

The flipbook will contain information for all types of emergencies.

"When we think of emergency preparedness, it's more than just the kind of things we think about in terms of an active shooter on campus like Virginia Tech and NIU," Perry said. "It's also tornados. It could be an explosion - an electrical transformer could blow up. We could have an explosion in a laboratory in a science building."

He said the hope is the procedures in the guides are never needed, but the university needs to be ready.

An online version of the emergency guide is available on the Alert EIU Web site.

Multiple ways to contact the university community remains a priority.

"We try to get multiple coverage to get multiple contacts," Perry said.

The university also uses mass e-mails to notify faculty, staff and students and a phone trees to get the word out to building coordinators.

"We believe we can get everybody covered, and we believe people will take us seriously," Perry said.


Matt Hopf can be reached at 581-7942 or at mthopf@eiu.edu.

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