The first week of each semester is a time for new students, faculty, and staff to familiarize themselves with the landmark buildings, classrooms, and dining spaces on campus, but it’s also an opportunity to identify the alerts, policies, and protocols issued by the Georgia Tech Office of Emergency Management (OEM).
The Georgia Tech Emergency Notification System (GTENS)
GTENS is a system used to share important information with the Georgia Tech community immediately. All students, faculty, and staff are automatically enrolled in email alerts, but are also encouraged to opt in to text and phone call alerts via passport.gatech.edu. GTENS alerts come in two forms:
GTENS Emergency! – This alert indicates an imminent threat to campus, i.e., natural disasters or an active shooter, requiring immediate action.
“These are the most prominent alerts we send out,” OEM Director William Smith said. An initial alert will instruct community members to shelter in place or evacuate, if necessary, but communication does not end at that point. During an emergency, OEM will continuously send out updated information as it becomes available. When the situation is resolved, OEM will issue a “GTENS All Clear” notification.
GTENS Inform – These alerts do not require immediate action but are meant to inform the community that the Georgia Tech Police Department (GTPD) and OEM are monitoring a situation on or near campus. Inform messages were developed in 2023 to issue a unified and reassuring message that a situation is being actively monitored by authorities.
Should the situation escalate to become a threat to campus, a GTENS Emergency! notification will be sent out.
Clery Act Safety Alert – Issued by GTPD, this alert notifies the campus community of a crime that has taken place on or around campus. Alerts are typically issued if the perpetrator has not been apprehended. While not indicating an immediate threat to the entire campus, the alerts allow the community to stay informed and protect themselves from similar incidents, i.e., robberies or assaults.
Guardians of students who attend Georgia Tech can opt in to GTENS by texting GTPARENT to 67283.
A Plan in Place
Of the phases of emergency management — preparedness, planning, response, and recovery — the OEM team spends most of its time on preparedness and planning to ensure campus partners are ready to respond at a moment’s notice, armed with the necessary resources. OEM works directly with building managers to develop emergency response plans, known as redbooks, for each of the 236 buildings on campus.
These plans provide specific details for each building, such as lab spaces that may require additional response efforts to contain unique biohazards. All plans offer a detailed map of the building to assist with shelter, evacuation, and first responder access. Building managers and occupants can request a meeting with OEM to review policies and procedures and ask questions in a session titled Emergency Preparedness 101.
To view the redbook for any building on campus, employees can use their Georgia Tech login and search the database here. Students interested in reading the plan can contact the building manager for assistance.
It’s All in the App
Along with the building-specific plans, OEM offers general guidance and reporting procedures for emergency scenarios on campus.
All Institute emergency procedures can be found in the LiveSafe App, along with other resources like campus maps, health and well-being services, and various ways to connect with GTPD. The app allows community members to access emergency policies from anywhere on campus and message or call GTPD. Messages can include photos, videos, and audio, along with a written message, which can be sent anonymously.
OEM highly recommends familiarizing yourself with the campus and surrounding area so that, in case of an emergency, you can provide as much information as possible.
Modified Operations
In the case of severe weather, safety concerns, or other interruptions to campus operations, a GTENS Inform message may alert the community to a shift to modified operations and/or digital learning.
Modified Operations: The modified operations policy refers to “temporary changes to Georgia Tech teaching, learning, research, and business operations in response to a threat of an emergency, ongoing emergency, or any other interruption that requires Institute-level action. In extreme cases, modified operations can include up to the cancellation or temporary suspension of all in-person and digital instruction.”
Digital Learning Days: For courses typically taught in person, a digital learning day is a day of instruction leveraging online delivery (either synchronous or asynchronous) due to the modification of campus operations.
The weather is often the cause of a shift in campus operations. When forecasts indicate potential impact to campus, OEM begins sending situational awareness emails to units to indicate how they may be affected and narrow the scope of the information shared by the National Weather Service. OEM communications inform the executive leadership team’s decisions when shifting campus operations.
Keeping Campus Running
Continuity planning is another key aspect of the OEM’s role. When an emergency affects campus life, such as the chilled water outage in 2024, OEM works with units to minimize disruptions. Communication is critical to managing a situation, but to be effective, it must begin before an emergency occurs.
Laura Gustavson, OEM’s assistant director, works with the 136 units on campus to develop continuity of operation (COOP) plans that can be enacted quickly. Certain actions must be taken in the early stages of an emergency, so the team prioritizes relationship building to cultivate a responsive and engaged network on campus.
“The relationship building that happened before the outage was critical during that specific incident because when those phone calls started happening, we were not introducing ourselves,” Gustavson said.
OEM arranges COOP training sessions for individual units, where they work through a hypothetical scenario to test response efforts and coordination.
The Team Behind the Alerts
Smith, Gustavson, and coordinator Gabbie Masinko make up the OEM team charged with preparing the Georgia Tech community to respond to and recover from all hazards. While each member of the team plays a different role, they all feel the same responsibility to keep people safe.
Smith, a Marine Corps veteran and 2001 Tech alumnus in international affairs, never knew he’d work in emergency management, but he says, “I knew this type of service is in my DNA.” His grandfather was a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, and his father worked for Florida Power, routinely dealing with power losses after storms.
Gustavson has always been fascinated by the field. A trip to her hometown EMA office sparked the curiosity that eventually led her to pursue a career in emergency management. Masinko is responsible for emergency planning and supports day-to-day activities for the Office of Emergency Management. She began at Georgia Tech after starting her career as a broadcast meteorologist in Louisiana.
The trio is constantly in communication with each other and often studies previous emergencies — at Tech and around the world — to learn what can be done better the next time, because, as Smith says, “You’re always a phone call or a text away from dropping everything” and putting plans into action.
