Earthquake
safety well within CSULB’s reach
By Vanessa Hale
Online Forty-Niner
Contributing Writer
With the inevitable threat of a large earthquake rocking Southern California,
students, faculty and staff of Cal State Long Beach need to be aware that it
is up to them to find out what to do in case the “big one” hits.
Sgt. Scott Brown, CSULB emergency services coordinator, said information about
earthquake safety and preparedness is available in several places on campus,
but no one is actively handing it out. Faculty, staff and students must look
for it on their own. Some of that information can be found on the college Web
site at www.csulb.edu.
An in-depth brochure that addresses emergency preparedness has been sent to new
employees hired in the last three years, if they have an office assigned in their
name or if they share an office under a department name. Only those with assigned
offices in their names receive mass mailings, Brown said.
A different multicolored brochure with tips on how to respond to a variety of
disasters and emergencies, including earthquakes, was sent to employees in a
mass campus mailing two years ago, he added, but whether they received it also
depends on whether they have an office.
Part-time professors probably have not received a brochure, Brown said. That
amounts to more than half of the professors on campus. According to Academic
Personnel, 1,108 professors teach part-time while only 966 teach full-time. Recently
updated earthquake preparedness flyers are also available in the lobby of the
school police department, near Lot 11 on Palo Verde Avenue, Brown said.
Posters in most classrooms give brief instructions on what to do during and immediately
after an earthquake, although they appear old.
“
Not much has changed in personal response to earthquakes, so although the posters
may be old, they still have good information,” Brown said.
Brown also teaches free safety classes in the University Emergency Operations
Center, located in the Horn Center on campus, but they are taught by request,
and are not regularly scheduled.
“
Unfortunately, large-scale presentations in emergency preparedness do not attract
enough people to make them fiscally reasonable,” Brown said.
His classroom only holds 30 people and even then, he said, it is never filled.
Brown said he teaches between two and six classes per year and estimates he has
trained about 300 people so far. During these classes, Brown discusses evacuation
procedures, campus disaster preparedness and planning and personal disaster preparedness
and planning, just
to name a few. Classes are coordinated through the Office of Staff Personnel
in BH-335.
The school is checking into e-mail to get disaster preparedness and response
information distributed more widely, Brown said. That will allow documents to
be sent to everyone with a campus e-mail address, including students. The goal
is to start using e-mail this semester, Brown said.
“
I am working with Public Affairs to create a Web site that will hopefully address
this issue,” he said.
Departments or individual professors can request training by contacting him via
e-mail at
sebrown@csulb.edu.
|
