In this Feb. 4 photo, UConn police block off a section of Fairfield Way as university workers attempt to fix an outage. Another power outage occurred on Feb. 25 and affected students living along North Eagleville Road and Route 195. (Zhelun Lang/Daily Campus)
For some, the morning of Thursday, Feb. 25 began with a strange noise of a reset alarm clock. For others, their lights went out during a late night cram-session. But most students probably woke up to morning whispers or social media messages about an incident that passed unnoticed in the night.
Just before 1:30 a.m., the high winds of the thunderstorm damaged circuit #3, which caused power outages along North Eagleville Road and Route 195, including North Campus, Towers, Husky Village and East Campus.
The exact cause of the outage remains unknown, but natural forces during storms often cause damage to the power grid. Windswept debris, falling branches and direct lightning strikes are common storm hazards that are not easily preventable.
“In this particular outage, there were no electrical fires or electrical emergencies reported to the fire department,” Deputy Chief Gregory Priest said. The UConn Fire Department (UCFD) did assist, Priest said, by playing a “supportive role to our partners in Facilities.”
Their first objective was to establish situational awareness by becoming a part of an Incident Management System (IMS). The IMS provides a structure for centralized information distribution and decision making.
In this case, UCFD’s Command Staff and Office of Emergency Management responded to the Division for University Safety’s Emergency Operations Center.
“The staff that make up the Emergency Operations Team is dependent on the incident,” said Christopher Renshaw Captain of the OEM. The roster for a laboratory outage may be different than the one for a residence hall blackout.
The next support step includes, “verifying the function of emergency egress lights, and ensuring that the fire alarm systems are functioning on battery power,” Priest said.
To repower the circuit, Facilities Operations and Building Services (FOBS) was contacted by the Fire department and immediately activated their Emergency Response Team. They worked side by side the crew of Eversource, the utility company that helps power the university.
“It was a fantastic effort and partnership between our crews,” Associate Vice President of FOBS Mike Jednak said, “especially in the wee small hours of the night.”
The partnership worked for four hours until 5:30 am, when they fully restored power to the circuit. No other significant issues were caused by the power outage, and classes began as scheduled.
Despite the unpredictable nature of lightning storms, FOBS performs, “preventative maintenance to the entire electrical infrastructure to minimize risk,” Jednak said.
To help incident response, FOBS has a phone request service, the Work Order Control Center (WOCC).
For emergencies, students should call in a Facilities Emergency to 860-486-3113. According to the WOCC’s webpage, “an immediate or imminent threat to life, or severe property damage,” is assigned Priority code #1, the highest level of request.
The Office of Emergency Management’s (OEM) website has been updated to incorporate essential training on the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the Incident Command System (ICS). This training, which is both a federal standard and best practice for incident management, will improve our University’s ability to prepare for, respond to and recover from emergency incidents. All UConn staff and faculty are encouraged to follow the links to FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute and take the online introductory courses. OEM is the central hub for tracking the University’s NIMS competency. If you are a faculty or staff member of the University of Connecticut, please forward your NIMS/ICS certificates to oem@uconn.edu.
Please visit our NIMS and ICS page for more information.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has developed a mobile FEMA App. This mobile app is available for Apple, Blackberry, and Android devices. The app offers users general tips to survive natural disasters, kit building information, locations of shelters and other resources, and more. The app also allows users receive alerts from the National Weather Service based on locations selected. FEMA also has the app available in Spanish. The Office of Emergency Management recommends that members of the UConn community download the mobile FEMA app.
For more information and to download the app, go to FEMA’s mobile app page.
University locks in safety efforts, installs new door locks and safety center
By Sarah McNeal
UConn’s Division of University Safety is installing locks on classroom doors that lock from the inside and working towards opening a security operation center. (Zhelun Lang/Daily Campus)
UConn’s Division of University Safety is installing locks on classroom doors that lock from the inside and working towards opening a security operation center. (Zhelun Lang/Daily Campus)
UConn’s Division of University Safety is installing new locks on classroom doors for all campuses as part of the Classroom Security Program. This is a phase of a multi-faceted plan to ultimately create a security operation center for the Storrs campus.
“We are looking for efficiency,” said Assistant Director of University Safety Andrew Langlais. “It would be a lower tier information center.”
Once established, the center would deal with all departments with call taking and dispatching capabilities. Maintenance requests, active camera monitoring and intrusion alarms are part of what would be handled by the new center. All emergency calls would still be managed in a separate center.
“It would centralize and improve security on campus,” Langlais said.
Last February, the Division of University Safety created a group to look at physical security of UConn campuses. Outside firms were hired to consult on the various security systems in place, according to Langlais.
“One of the highest priorities at Storrs and regional campuses is that all classrooms can be locked from the inside in case of a violent threat on campus,” Langlais said. “It’s a stop-gap measure.”
There are no figures currently available on the cost of the new locking system as it is currently being put in place. The timeline for installations is also unknown. The program is being funded by the Division of University Safety in partnership with facilities and campus’ locksmiths.
Students were alerted to the new “comprehensive security program” through an Emergency Management Bulletin. Alongside notification of the new locks on classroom doors, they were also provided with plans for active shooter situations, bomb threats and power outages. They are specifically designed by the Division of University Safety for UConn students.
“We’re always working to educate the UConn community about our emergency preparedness plans,” said UConn Spokesperson Stephanie Reitz. “We encourage everyone to become ‘UConn Ready’ and to familiarize themselves with these plans as we work together toward the safest possible campus community.”
Mary Rose Duberek has over 25 years of State service starting her career as a Planning Analyst with the CT Department of Labor. Mary Rose comes to UConn Office of Emergency Management after spending the last 18 years working for the Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, Division of Emergency Management and Homeland Security (DESPP/DEMHS) as both an Emergency Management Program Specialist and the agency’s first female Regional Coordinator.
Having spent most of her time within the Radiological Emergency Preparedness Program (REP) unit, working with local, state, federal and nuclear industry representatives, Mary Rose worked to ensure compliance with state and federal laws in the development of the State Radiological Emergency Response Plan (RERP). In support of the REP program, she has participated in all the federally evaluated nuclear safety exercises since 1998 and has even served as an exercise controller for UConn’s last three Host Community exercises.
She has worked in three different DEMHS Regional Offices assisting over 120 chief elected officials, emergency management directors and other local officials in developing and implementing local emergency operation plans, conducting hazards analysis and qualifying for federal funds. During her tenure at DEMHS Mary Rose was assigned numerous positions during State Emergency Operation Center (SEOC) activations, including staffing operations, logistics, planning and the State’s Joint Information Center. The most notable of these activations include Y2K, September 11th, the back to back storms in the fall of 2011, Superstorm Sandy, the February Blizzard of 2015 and all the State emergencies in between. Mary Rose was also assigned to work at the State and Federal Joint Field Office (JFO) after several Presidential Declarations, including Superstorm Sandy.
Of all her accomplishments, she is especially proud of being assigned to the core team that successfully prepared the State to achieve Emergency Management Accreditation Program (EMAP) accreditation in 2015. Mary Rose developed strategies to meet emergency management program standards, analyzed federal guidance, researched best practices, and collaborated with internal and external stakeholders in developing plans to improve the State’s emergency management program culminating in the receipt of a Commissioner’s Recognition Award for her work on the EMAP project.
Mary Rose is a graduate of UConn with a BA in Communications. She lives with her husband and son in Tolland.
UConn works to re-evaluate, strengthen mass tragedy protocols
By Molly Stadnicki & Elizabeth Charash
In this file photo, the Jamie Homero Arjona building, which contains UConn’s Counseling and Mental Health Services, is pictured. (File Photo/The Daily Campus)
Each year, 33,000 gun deaths occur in America, with 54 percent of those deaths affecting people under the age of 30, according to Generation Progress. This year alone, America has witnessed 25 school shootings on college campuses, according to Time Magazine and CNN.
While University of Connecticut does not have any specific service for victims of gun violence, nor any clubs dedicated to gun violence prevention, the university’s Counseling and Mental Health Services (CMHS) supports students affected by these issues.
“While I (cannot) share specific examples, nor is it a statistic we collect at CMHS, I can say that we certainly have worked with students in the past who have lost loved ones related to gun violence,” CMHS Director Dr. Elizabeth Cracco said.
In lieu of multiple recent on-campus shootings around the nation, CMHS continues to re-evaluate and strengthen its protocols for mass tragedy within a working group at the university. They consult with the statewide Disaster Behavioral Health Response Network (DBHRN), who in turn work jointly with the Connecticut Department of Families and Children and the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.
Last year, the DBHRN trained over 80 UConn employees in Psychological First Aid so that the university would be well equipped to service mental health needs in the wake of mass disaster, Cracco said.
CMHS also works closely with the UConn Police Department (UCPD) to train staff for Active Shooter response in the event that a campus shooting should occur, Cracco said.
UConn Deputy Chief of Police Hans Rhynhart spoke of measures taken by the UCPD and elaborated on this Active Shooter response training.
“The general approach the Division of University Safety (Police, Fire, Office of Emergency Management and Emergency Communications) works under in active violence prevention and response is a three pronged approach: preventing acts of violence from occurring, if they do occur, stopping and/or mitigating the threat and providing medical care to the injured as quickly as possible and finally working to help the university community recover from this type of event,” Rhynhart said.
The UCPD continues active threat assessments through outreach with the Student Care Team, which is “a multidisciplinary team that meets regularly to evaluate behaviors by University students that are perceived to be threatening, harming or disruptive to the student, to others or to both and coordinate an appropriate response,” Rhynhart said.
Students can also take active threat training courses through the UCPD, which are offered several times throughout the year to all Storrs and regional campus students.
Should an incident occur, the UConn Office of Emergency Management (OEM) coordinates the university response with those affected on campus, OEM, UCPD and the UConn Fire Department have collaborated to create a ‘hazard guide’ on their websites available for the community to access.
“We in University Safety, as well as our colleagues across the campus, are continually evaluating our plans and protocols in preparation for an active violence incident,” Rhynhart said. “An example of this is the exploration of providing a safety app to university community members, which among other things, may provide a quick and easy way to report violence to the police department.”
Despite the fact that these protocols and training sessions sanctioned by the police department and CMHS are helpful in preparing the university and its staff, it doesn’t seem to ease students’ minds regarding safety.
“We have noted that over the past five years, anxiety is the number one presenting concern at CMHS,” Cracco said. “Certainly safety concerns are contributory, and if we are seeing and hearing about students and universities experiencing these events, it’s hard not to imagine ourselves in this situation.”
Another concern comes from CMHS’s end, where mental health quality is typically tied to gun violence. This raises a stigma that often prevents people from seeking help for any kind of mental illness they may have.
In a voluntary, anonymous survey conducted by the Daily Campus, 66 percent of the 47 UConn students polled felt that mental health sometimes plays a role in acts of gun violence, while 31.9 percent felt that it always plays a role. In an open-ended response, many students commented on the fact that many individuals who commit mass shootings are mentally ill. The majority of answers included words like “unstable,” “disturbed,” “crazy” and “psychopathic.”
However, Cracco said it is attitudes like these that lead to the misrepresentation of mental illness in gun violence. People with serious mental illnesses commit only three to five percent of mass shootings. A 2001 study of 34 adolescents who had committed mass murders found that that while most had problems socially, abused drugs or alcohol or were bullied, only six percent were noted as medically psychotic upon committing a crime, according to WWLP-22 News.
“What we don’t want to say is those with mental illnesses are more likely to commit violent acts. In fact, that’s not the case,” forensic psychologist for WWLP-22 News, Dr. Stephen Ross, said. “There are some folks who have done mass shootings, who have killed people; they may not be mentally ill, but they’re socially and morally depraved.”
It is “critical to note” that a large majority of people who have mental health problems are not at all violent, Cracco said. Having said that, early prevention and intervention for any case of mental illness is so important to address.
“(Stigma) misrepresents those who live with a mental health disorder and in many cases trivializes their experiences,” UConn Active Minds club president Susan Kusmierski said. “Stigma is one of the main reasons why people do not seek help or treatment for their illness and can be very debilitating.”
Another Active Minds member and third-semester student with a double major in Spanish and psychology said she lost her brother who was believed to have had schizophrenia, unexpectedly last spring to suicide in which he used a gun. Her brother and father had enjoyed hunting as a pastime and had taken multiple courses in gun safety. She said people have told her that if there were not firearms in her house, his death would have never occurred.
The student asked to remain anonymous for personal reasons, including recency of the event and sensitivity toward the issue.
“I think what people fail to understand is that if an individual has truly made the conscious decision to commit suicide, they will find the means to do so,” she said. “(Discussions about gun violence) must be kept separate at an appropriate level from conversations about mental illness. There is little evidence that those who have been diagnosed with a mental illness are more likely to commit an act of gun violence.”
To verify, “decades of research have shown that the link between mental disorders and violent behavior is small and not useful for predicting violent acts,” according to Mother Jones, a reputable non-profit news source.
“Mental illness does not cause gun violence. Consciously making false connections between the two does, however, cause stigma,” the student said. “And stigma has very real consequences for those suffering from a mental illness.”
In the survey conducted by the Daily Campus, it was found that 59.6 percent of polled students have been impacted by gun violence in some way.
Warren Hardy, a Hartford youth development professional, street mediator certified as a Level I Kingian Nonviolence trainer and a member of the board of directors for the Connecticut Center for Nonviolence said, “This is an epidemic against young people. We can make gun violence preventable if we reach out and build a relationship with people instead of allowing the hurt to build up and create violence.”
Hardy hopes that the extensive violence can be curbed through outreach to youth and individuals who have been victims. He called for increased involvement of the student voice in this process of violence removal.
Sarah Clements, another activist and also a student organizer with Generation Progress, agreed that “student voices are incredibly crucial” in making decisions that will help end gun violence. Clements has been an advocate for gun violence prevention since her mother survived the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. She is also involved with her school’s group, Georgetown Against Gun Violence, founded in 2014.
Clements argued that gun violence prevention measures have shaped the lives of our generation, as young people have grown up with “lockdown drills, bullet proof backpacks, campus carry legislation, and news reports of shootings on the regular in our communities.” All of this puts colleges students in a unique position to use learning and experience to help advance today’s movement on guns, Clements said.
“There is a growing number of campus groups being formed around the country,” Clements said. “Whether you help build something like that at your school, or join groups from the local, state and national level which advocate on this issue, it’s not difficult to get involved.”
As is the case with most movements, the phrasing and terminology implored by the individuals that comprise the participants greatly determines the success of the movement.
“Messaging is everything in political advocacy and politics in general, on any issue or electoral campaign,” Clements said. “I would say the purpose of saying ‘gun violence prevention’ or ‘gun reform’ rather than ‘gun control’ is to be more specific with the goals of our movement. We do not want to control rights to own a firearm. We do want to prevent gun violence with common sense policy solutions.”
Like Clements, founder and president of Georgetown Against Gun Violence Emma Iannini advocates for the presence of a stronger student voice on college campuses.
“The leading cause of death in 18-30 year olds is no longer automobile accidents, it’s gun violence,” Iannini said. “We have elected officials that are voting for laws that are not keeping us safe.”
Iannini said she is tired of having to tolerate gun violence and is worried that if it continues, she might have to send her future children to schools where lockdown drills are still commonplace.
“We live in a culture where gun violence impacts everyone,” Cracco said. “Whether directly or vicariously, whether by gun violence or the more pervasive aspects of interpersonal violence.”
Anyone in the UConn community struggling with mental illness, the effects of gun violence or any other kind of issue should not hesitate to contact any of the sources listed below:
Counseling and Mental Health Services: (860) 486-4705
UConn Police Department: (860) 486-4800 or 911
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has identified November as Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience Month. According to DHS, the purpose of this month is to build “awareness and appreciation of the importance of critical infrastructure and reaffirms the nationwide commitment to keep our critical infrastructure and our communities safe and secure. Securing the nation’s infrastructure, which includes both the physical facilities that supply our communities with goods and services, like water, transportation, and fuel, and the communication and cyber technology that connects people and supports the critical infrastructure systems we rely on daily, is a national priority that requires planning and coordination across the whole community.”
DHS has identified 16 critical infrastructure sectors. They are:
Chemical Sector
Commercial Facilities Sector
Communications Sector
Critical Manufacturing Sector
Dams Sector
Defense Industrial Base Sector
Emergency Services Sector
Energy Sector
Financial Services Sector
Food and Agriculture Sector
Government Facilities Sector
Healthcare and Public Health Sector
Information Technology Sector
Nuclear Reactors, Materials, and Waste Sector
Transportation Systems Sector
Water and Wastewater Sector
This month, DHS encourages all Americans to get involved with critical infrastructure security and resilience. The Office of Emergency Management encourages you to read the Presidential Proclamation for Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience Month and to review the Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience Month fact sheet from DHS. You can do your part by being prepared for all hazards, reporting suspicious activities, and learning more about critical infrastructure security and resilience. This information is provided by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. For more information, visit DHS’s website.
