Newspaper: Lancaster New Era
Date: March 28, 2005

Student aid: colleges lending help in emergencies

LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - Following the tornado that devastated Campbelltown in neighboring Lebanon County last summer, Millersville University professor John Scala analyzed the natural disaster for the National Weather Service.

During the nuclear plant accident at Three Mile Island in March 1979, the physics department of Dickinson College in Carlisle helped monitor levels of radiation near the damaged reactor.

Preceding severe flooding in the Wilkes-Barre area in June 1972 and again last autumn, students from Wilkes University, King's College and College Misericordia helped stack sandbags on Susquehanna River levees.

These disaster responses developed out of individual college plans to deal with crises.

Now colleges and universities are combining forces with their communities to create a statewide disaster preparation plan called "Ready Campus" that will serve the needs of everyone living near the institutions.

Organizers refer to this initiative as a "campus-community collaboration."

"We need to plan ahead, not be reactive but proactive in the planning," says Scala, who not in meteorology but is associate director of the Center for Disaster Research & Education at MU.

Coordinators of Ready Campus include Pennsylvania Campus Compact, an organization reprsenting colleges; College Misericordia; Pennsylvania's Office of Homeland Security; the American Red Cross and others.

James Binge, who directs Pennsylvania Campus Compact, explains that the Ready Campus three interrelated initiatives.

_ College campuses review their disaster relief plans and coordinate them with community e personnel so that campus housing, medical facilities and other services could be opened to t community during a crisis.

The Ready Campus program helps by offering training and technical assistance. Representat colleges, including MU, Franklin & Marshall and Elizabethtown will attend a Ready Campus tr next Friday in Grantville.

"These training workshops are designed to help colleges and community agencies begin a di Binge. "Now is the time to do it, before a crisis is at hand."

_ Colleges integrate emergency management into courses of study, encouraging students ar consider how they would respond to a disaster.

Students might examine the effects of natural disasters in an earth science course and consi questions (whether the priority should be to protect members of one's own family or the cor large, for example) in a religious studies course.

The program also will encourage practical learning by helping to place students with emerge in volunteer service projects.

_ Ready Campus is coordinating these initiatives by developing a manual to help colleges int plans with the overall community's disaster relief efforts.

Ready Campus is funded by a $500,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Emergency Manageme through the federal Department of Homeland Security.

The Ready Campus program is unique to Pennsylvania and eventually may be used as a moo states.

Coordinators emphasize that the program will not take authority away from professional em, personnel. The idea is to offer assistance to Red Cross workers, police, medical personnel an crisis.

"Everyone wins," says Scala. "The student gains a greater appreciation for the community, e community gains because it gets informed people working on these topics."

"We're not experts in emergency planning," notes James Roberts, director of marketing and relations at College Misericordia, "but we think we know how to set up a plan."

The idea for Ready Campus originated at Misericordia, where students and staff not only san Wilkes-Barre levees but opened the campus to community residents who lost their homes di caused by Tropical Storm Agnes in 1972.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Dr. Michael MacDowell, president of Misericordia, Pennsylvania Campus Contact and other organizations to help create a statewide college-ba! to natural and human-caused disasters. -

"While the country may be focused on terrorism," comments Scala, "there are a lot of natur, are out there and would be more likely."

The first Ready Campus training sessions were held at Misericordia and in Pittsburgh last aul addition to next week's session at Grantville, another workshop will be held at Penn State's c Campus in Malvern April S. There is no charge.