A biweekly publication for faculty and staff

'ShakeOut' Examines Campus’s Preparedness

October 19, 2015

The campus community, along with more than 500,000 people from Merced County and six other counties in the Central Valley South region, participated in the “Great California ShakeOut” drill Oct. 15.

The disaster drills began in 2008 in California to remind individuals to "drop, cover and hold" in the event of an earthquake and has since spread to other states and countries.

As part of the exercise, the Department of Public Safety sent text messages through UCM Alert to students, parents, and faculty and staff members who have entered their cell phone numbers into the emergency notification system.

If you didn’t receive a text message alert to your cell phone about the exercise, please update your notification information online to ensure you will receive them in the future.

In addition, the campus’s building safety coordinators suited up in their blue vests and yellow hats, and talked with colleagues on their floors or within their areas about exits and the evacuation assembly areas for their buildings. Some took the exercise a step further and evacuated their areas.

Participating in exercises like the “Great California ShakeOut” allows the campus to assess its capabilities and plans and enables Emergency Operations Center staff, emergency responders and building safety coordinators to put their training into practice. The campus benefits from lessons learned to make UC Merced more resilient when an emergency or disaster strikes.

Review additional emergency preparedness resources, including the campus’s emergency operations plan, online at emergency.ucmerced.edu.