Disaster Response Done Right
MSUM Director of Security Michael Parks’ planning and quick thinking before, during and after the massive Red River flood of 2009 helped save the city of Moorhead, Minn. It also earned him this year’s Campus Safety Director of the Year, Education Award.
But in addition to directing the volunteers, Parks had to arrange sleeping accommodations for hundreds of officers and employees from the National Guard, Civil Air Patrol and Public Health. “All of the hotels in the community couldn’t be occupied because the water had been turned off and there was no sewer service, or they had already been reserved for other people,” says Parks.
Fortunately, MSUM, which maintained water and sewer services during the disaster, had a dorm property that had been vacated about a year earlier. The problem? The residence hall was dirty and didn’t have any furniture or beds in it. Parks, however, was able to enlist the school’s wrestling team to help move furniture into the building.
In just a few hours, the empty dormitory was turned into a 300-bed hotel, complete with laundry and meal services. All told, food service operated about 20 hours per day and served approximately 20,000 meals (40,000 pounds of donated food and water) to first responders and volunteers.
Additionally, another school building was designated as the secondary evacuation center. Parks led MSUM’s preparations to shelter about 1,500 flood victim evacuees. Although the site was not used, the logistics was an additional challenge that had to be addressed by Parks and his department.
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Emergency Call Center Set Up in 6 Hours
Despite his extensive planning, some challenges had to be addressed on the fly. For example, a few days into the crisis, Parks received a call from the chief of police asking the school to open a call center.
“We don’t have a call center on campus, but we do have our own phone system, and we were able to string wire for 52 phone lines into a classroom,” says the security director. “We were able to get 52 phones, a computer database and organize all of the logistics. We had it outfitted in about six hours.”
As a result, the center handled 15,000 calls and operated 24/7 for the duration of the disaster. At first, it tracked the whereabouts of the evacuated community residents. After the initial evacuation period, the call center transitioned to a reoccupation data collection point for returning evacuees.
MSUM Learns Valuable Lessons From Disaster
For the most part, however, Parks planning was the key to MSUM’s disaster response running so smoothly. His foresight and leadership – and NIMS compliance – also helped the campus recoup its expenses. Parks worked with MSUM’s comptroller to record expenditures for the emergency, which resulted in the campus quickly being reimbursed by FEMA.
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About the Author
Robin Hattersley, Editor-in-Chief
Robin has been covering the security and campus law enforcement industries since 1998 and is a specialist in school, university and hospital security, public safety and emergency management, as well as emerging technologies and systems integration. She joined CS in 2005 and has authored award-winning editorial on campus law enforcement and security funding, officer recruitment and retention, access control, IP video, network integration, event management, crime trends, the Clery Act, Title IX compliance, sexual assault, dating abuse, emergency communications, incident management software and more. Robin has been featured on national and local media outlets and was formerly associate editor for the trade publication Security Sales & Integration. She obtained her undergraduate degree in history from California State University, Long Beach.
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