Vanguard University puts its earthquake preparedness to the test
- Share via
A campus community came together with emergency preparedness in mind Wednesday, as Costa Mesa’s Vanguard University simulated a major seismic event.
Different from the elementary school drills that require little beyond evacuating the classroom in a single-file line, the scheduled activities required participants to account for various needs, should outside assistance not be immediately available.
The drill asked dozens of students, school staff and campus safety personnel to divide into eight groups tasked with working to find or establish plans for communications, food and water, housing, medical needs and rescue operations. Breakout groups completed tasks pertaining to emergency supplies, security, even the need for restrooms.
Kent Ferrin, director of campus safety, came away encouraged by the summertime operation. The fall academic term begins Aug. 31, meaning the participants largely consisted of students who‘d returned to campus early.
“I’m impressed with, so far, how we pushed this out, and how it’s been received, and how everyone’s taking it seriously,” Ferrin said. “Part of this whole thing, too, is we’ve just revamped all of our plans. I’m kind of looking forward to seeing if something didn’t work as we designed it, then I need to know that too.”
Ferrin added the college has enough resources to cover the basic needs of its living-on-campus community — about half of its 2,000 students — for five to seven days, should a natural disaster occur, until outside agencies would be able to respond.
The training could be held once a year, said Ferrin, who believes each group of trainees will benefit from the previously learned lessons.
“Something of this scale would be hard to do multiple times,” he noted. “We’ll probably have to plan it like this, where we’re involving our teams, our [resident directors] and [resident assistants], that are going to go out and actually be the leaders of something like this.
“I think this is going to be kind of the sweet spot for us, as a university, and I look forward to learning everything we’re going to learn from it this year.”
Jessica Van Winkle, a Vanguard alumna and now a resident director, described her role as a “first responder.” The need for resident staff to take a more active role in establishing command and organizing response teams was an area for improvement identified after the drill.
“If [an emergency is] during a time when none of the rest of the professional staff are on campus, because it’s after business hours, we’re one of very few people actually here to help handle and manage the crisis, or natural disaster or whatever it is,” Van Winkle said.
While he hopes to never have to put the training into practice in a real-life disaster, Michael Oliva Hernandez, a junior musical theater major and resident assistant, said it’s “better being safe than sorry.”
“I’m very passionate about this, because it helps me be prepared for anything that could happen, as a role to serve the community and being there for other students,” Oliva Hernandez said. “This is very crucial for me to understand what campus safety needs from us as leaders on campus.”
