Human error causes false evacuation alert

Last Thursday, following a small chemical explosion in the Ford Environmental Science and Technology building, the Tech community received a series of emergency notification messages even though the evacuation was restricted to the ES&T building.

"It was strictly human error. Someone sent it out who evidently had the capability but did not have the authority to send the message and should have never sent it," said Andy Altizer, Director of Emergency Preparedness.

Peter Hylton was sitting in class when a group of students in the back of the room told their professor of an emergency evacuation message they had just received on their phones. As the fourth-year International Affairs and Modern Languages major and his classmates walked away from campus, Hylton received a voice message with instructions to evacuate. Shortly thereafter, he received two other messages to disregard the evacuation notice.

"Your heart speeds up, because you don't know what's going on. What wasn't going on that they originally thought was happening? At the same time, I saw a news helicopter flying over. I was totally confused on what to do," Hylton said.

At the ES&T building, Altizer was notified by a police officer that someone had sent out an emergency notification for campus wide evacuation.

"It was not something I wanted to hear, because it was not a situation that would ever begin to warrant a campus evacuation. We immediately made a decision to retract the message, before we knew who sent it or how it was sent. We are extremely sorry that it even went out. It was a surprise and a disappointment," Altizer said.

Altizer did not disclose the identity of the individual who sent out the evacuation notice, but said that corrective action was taken. The individual works in the Tech police communications center, from where he sent the message.

"We have several messages in the system that are preloaded for fast notification. One is a general campus evacuation that we would build upon. He tried to send that one out [for the Ford building only] and ended up sending the general evacuation message out," Altizer said.

Friday morning, administrators and students met at an After Action Report (AAR)meeting to discuss what became the first run of Connect-ED, the new emergency notification system Tech purchased. Anu Parvatiyar, undergraduate student body president, was one of two students present.

"Right after the incident happened, I sent out an e-mail asking for information from students...My inbox has been flooded, and that's a good thing. The general consensus is that they're a little frustrated with the order or the quality of the messages, but they're glad they got them. I was able to take that back to the AAR meeting and share what some of the glitches were," Parvatiyar said.

Based on Friday's meeting Altizer is now preparing an AAR and Improvement Plan for President Wayne Clough and executive vice president for Administration and Finance Bob Thompson. Altizer expects the report to list six or seven pages of recommendations.

"Some people thought they should have gotten [the messages], but either didn't opt in correctly or their phone carrier may have messed it up. Some people complained there was too much clutter in the e-mail message from the vendor we work with. A few people claimed their emergency notification e-mail went to their junk box, which was a complete surprise to us. Another lesson we learned was that some people ignored the voice message because they didn't recognize the phone number...but the most widely received comment was that the message needs to be more descriptive," Altizer said.

Altizer has removed the evacuation message that was sent Thursday from the list of preloaded messages and has said that he will work around the 130 character limit to create messages that are sufficiently descriptive. Parvatiyar was also added to the Emergency Notification Working Group and was asked to lead a student focus group to evaluate the messages. Action will also be taken to address the other concerns.

"The constructive comments are welcome. It's going to make our system incredibly better because we're learning things especially on the technical aspect that we needed to know," Altizer said.

In the event of a crisis on campus, five people are authorized to send an emergency notification: the executive vice president for Administration and Finance, the director of Emergency Preparedness, the chief of police, the deputy chief of police and the patrol division commander.

Everyone on campus receives the message by e-mail, but those wishing to receive it by SMS or voice message must opt in on the passport.gatech.edu website. The messages would be sent out from the OIT operations center.

"[The OIT operations center staff] are trained on it and would be told what to send, either one of the preloaded messages on the system or it may be dictated to them right on the phone," Altizer said.

If OIT cannot send the message, those authorized to send the emergency notification can also send it by logging on to the Connect-ED website from home or authorizing the police communications center to send it. Altizer said he could also use Tech's home webpage, the campus cable network and a new siren system expected to be up in January to relay emergency messages to the campus community.

Since the incident, the number of people opting into the system has increased by six percent to 15,550 users.

"I think what happened last Thursday is one of the best ways to increase participation in the system. It's sad that it had to be a message like that, that created so much confusion...but it's good that these questions are coming up now instead of in the aftermath of something much, much worse," Parvatiyar said.