The University discovered a glitch in its emergency preparedness plan following yesterday's tornado drill. The Office of Emergency Preparedness sent an e-mail to the University community stating it "experienced difficulties" with its new emergency mass e-mail system.
"We experienced difficulty with [the emergency e-mail system] almost immediately ... once we saw [that it wasn't working] the decision was not to go forward with that," Director of Emergency Preparedness Marjorie Sidebottom said.
According to Sidebottom, the emergency e-mail system engineers are going to look into the problem to determine what needs to be done to fix the error.
"We will be getting together with those engineers once we find out what the problem is," Sidebottom said. "Then we are going test again."
Despite the glitch, Sidebottom said she believes the tornado drill was successful.
"Everything else went really well," she said.
Sidebottom noted that the UVaAlerts text message, sent at 9:46 yesterday morning, worked well, although she added that students and faculty received the message at varying times depending on their carriers.
Students and faculty can give feedback regarding the drill via a link to a survey on the University Web site. More than 1,000 people have already completed the survey, Sidebottom said, adding she hopes the feedback will help to perfect the emergency preparedness system in the future.
"That's why you drill," Sidebottom said. "You test until you get it right."
--compiled by Emily Poe
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