Newspaper: Citizens Voice
Date: June 3, 2004

Misericordia ready for trouble

New project focuses on crisis readiness

By Denise Allabaugh Citizens' Voice Staff Writer

College Misericordia, Dallas, is ready to respond to a crisis, according to college president Dr. Michael MacDowell. Other colleges and universities also will work together to prepare for and respond to emergencies.

The effort is part of a new project called Ready Campus, which is funded through a $500,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency.

On Thursday, MacDowell joined Keith Martin, director of Pennsylvania Office of Homeland Security; James Birge, executive director of Pennsylvania Campus Compact: David Sanko, executive director of Pennsylvania Emergency Agency, and other state and college officials to announce the project.

MacDowell recalled how College Misericordia's response' during the 1972 Hurricane Agnes flood "demonstrates how a college campus can serve as a valuable resource to the community during a crisis."

During the flood, College Misericordia's campus became an evacuation center in the Back Mountain area. Nesbitt Medical Center was housed in Alumnae Hall, where 52 babies were delivered.

More than 1,000 people, homeless from the flood, arrived on campus for shelter, food and medical treatment.

"With a greater focus on crisis readiness today, the lessons forged out of necessity in 1972 can be thoughtfully planned and developed," MacDowell said. "We all recognize that there are new and real threats and the state's higher education institutions have a very strong interest in helping to ensure the safety of our communities."

Ready Campus was developed by College Misericordia, Pennsylvania Campus Compact, Pennsylvania's Office of Homeland Security, the American Red Cross, the Pennsylvania Association of Colleges and Universities, and the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Pennsylvania.

Martin said the project is designed to protect the community, to better secure and prepare college campuses if these institutions are "put in the role where they have to be an evacuation center, a family assistance center, an alternate government center or a volunteer response staging area."

"Any one of those four things or all of them could be a role that a college or a university in this commonwealth, or country, might have to play in response to a disaster," Martin said.

Martin credited College Misericordia for taking the initiative to be prepared in response to an "unprovoked attack." He stressed the need for "relentless vigilance."

"I am asked every day: Will we be attacked again? My answer is they can try again, but I can tell you this time, we can stop them," Martin said. "The more we have people involved and alert, but not alarmed, the safer and better prepared our communities will be."

The project includes training sessions for higher education and community participants, to be held next fall and spring at College Misericordia and sites in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Harrisburg.

Training sessions will be led by experts in risk management, civic engagement, disaster planning, service learning and volunteer mobilization.

"This project will expand dramatically the role of colleges and universities as resources for their host communities during times of emergency," Birge said.

Information on Ready Campus will be mailed to Pennsylvania's colleges and universities over the next few months.

dallabaugh@citizensvoice.com