Scenes from the 8th Annual Preparedness Fair
September 17, 2014
Emergencies can range from inconvenient to devastating, but advance preparation often goes a long way toward mitigating the effects.
To ensure preparedness, UT Dallas’ Department of Environmental Health and Safety held its 8th Annual Emergency Preparedness Fair from 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. Tuesday, September 16 in the Visitor Center Atrium.
“It’s important to prepare for emergencies because it’s not if something will happen, it’s when it will happen”, said Emergency Management Specialist Angela Dees.
The fair is timed each year to coincide with National Preparedness Month, sponsored by the US Department of Homeland Security’s Ready Campaign.
“We promote three emergency response procedures: shelter in place, evacuations and lockdown. Also, we urge students, faculty and staff to be aware or our emergency notification systems and want them to know what each alert means and what the appropriate response should be when receiving the alerts”, Dees said.
Hundreds of students, faculty and staff members streaming through the atrium were encouraged to follow basic health, safety and emergency preparation steps. Fair attractions and activities included:
- Information booths
- Fire extinguisher training
- Smoke simulation
- Emergency response vehicle display
- Food, drinks, music, and prizes
Members of the UT Dallas Community Emergency Response Team program presented information about their group at one of the dozen booths set up for the event.
UT Dallas is one of the first universities in Texas to have a campus response team. Since 2004, team members have been educating co-workers about disaster preparedness and training them in basic response skills, such as fire safety, search and rescue, team organization and emergency medical operations.
Environmental Health and Safety regularly presents information on what to do in an emergency to students, faculty and staff during new student and new employee orientations and by setting up booths monthly in the Comet Café where they can interact with the campus community.
The fair aims to remind the public that federal, state and local government prevention and rescue planning can play only a limited role and that an informed citizenry is a ready and prepared citizenry.