When disaster strikes
When the university community was threatened via an anonymous email last October in reaction to feminist video game critic Anita Sarkeesian’s upcoming presentation, some Utah State University employees went into crisis mode, preparing for what could happen next.
Judy Crockett was one of those employees.
And although Sarkeesian cancelled her talk and university life went back to normal, Crockett continued planning for a potential crisis. As USU’s emergency manager, it’s her full-time job to facilitate the planning, coordination and training to handle any crisis USU could experience, from snow storms to fires to active shooters.
Crockett’s plans operate using a universal incident management system, put in place by the federal government after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in New York City. She’s been in this position for almost nine years, working with multiple campus offices, Logan City Police, the fire department, Bear River Health Department and more, to ensure that, should a crisis occur, the USU community would be safe.
“It’s my job to keep that in place up here and train everyone who’s going to respond in any capacity on what that system is.”
The Utah Statesman sat down with Crockett this week and asked her about what it’s like to managing emergency planning for a university.
Utah Statesman: How long has this been a position at USU?
Judy Crockett: It was a part-time position for many years, held by Sgt. Lynn Wright, who started the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program at USU. All of it came about after, during the Iraq War (when) we got a bomb threat up here and we decided to evacuate campus. There wasn’t a plan or anything in place and so after we did that we started the wheels rolling. When Lynn retired, a (university) vice president at the time said, ‘We need to have a full-time emergency manager.’ I was over at dispatch at the time, but they had been sending me to training and preparing me because they knew Lynn was close to retiring.
US: What are some of the potential crises you’ve prepared for?
JC: Earthquakes, active shooters … there’s a lot of training that’s being going into that lately. But as far as response, we organize the same way on all incidents, so we use an all-hazard approach. If it’s an earth quake, we’re going to use the incident command system. If it’s a fire, we still use that. It organizes the same way, and then we expand and retract from it depending on what the incident is.
US: How many USU employees are CERT certified?
JC: We have 200. … It varies because people quit (or) retire so there’s a lot of fluctuation. … We have an emergency management committee that meets quarterly and it includes people from (a wide range of offices and departments). It’s a good variety that covers all aspects at the university. And we’re getting more and more (volunteers) all the time. … It’s coming around. I’m really, really pleased.
US: What goes into emergency planning on a university scale?
JC: It’s a lot of coordination with different entities, and it takes a lot of people to coordinate and prepare the university. It’s not just me. … We have to get together and get to know each other and understand that this is a system that has to work. … Everybody seems to understand that this is important. Sometimes it’s a little hard to find time for it … so if we can keep our training to an hour here and there, that’s not so hard to find time for.
US: What would you like students to know about your job?
JC: I want people to understand that we’re really trying to make this a safe campus, but if something does happen, we are going to be on top of it, and we will take care of it the best we can.
Crockett and her team are facilitating the Great Utah “ShakeOut” Earthquake Drill on Thursday. A mock-crisis command center will be set up on The Quad from 10 a.m. to noon. For more information about USU Emergency Management visit dps.usu.edu/emergency.
Note: Some responses have been shortened, edited in the interest of length.
— manda.perkins@hotmail.com