Alert to be tested today
By Roberta Wolfson
May 19, 2008 10:30 p.m.
Students, staff members and faculty traversing the UCLA campus today may hear intermittent loudspeaker announcements throughout the day as part of the Emergency Management Office’s effort to test their new BruinAlert outdoor warning system.
The announcements will largely consist of such statements as “Test, test, this is a test of the BruinAlert outdoor warning alert. This is only a test,” and will occur in intervals throughout the next two weeks, said David Burns, emergency manager for the Emergency Management Office.
The BruinAlert outdoor warning system is the latest addition to available campus safety services. Known as the “Big Voice” to internal members of the Emergency Management Office, the outdoor warning system has been implemented as part of an effort to make the UCLA campus safer by enabling emergency messages to be conveyed to the UCLA community more quickly.
The outdoor warning system consists of several speaker units that will be placed in Drake Stadium and the Intramural Field, and on top of Rieber Terrace and the Humanities Building.
In the event of an emergency, the system will alert the UCLA campus to safety instructions and information.
“The outdoor warning system is a new piece, which we’re going to fire up (today),” Burns said.
“We’ll be testing to evaluate how well the speaker systems will work on campus.”
Each speaker unit can project sound as far as 2,000 feet, but will most likely be operating within a range of 800 to 1,000 feet, since the units have been placed at roughly 1,000-feet intervals.
The university has invested quite a bit of research and money into finding the best speaker system available, Burns said.
Each speaker system costs about $50,000, adding up to a total of roughly $200,000 including installation, construction and electrical costs, he said.
The high cost reflects the quality of the equipment, as the speakers have a very high sound quality, Burns said.
“Most of the systems out there … were designed to make a lot of noise, but not to have a voice warning,” Burns said.
“(The speakers we purchased) are specifically engineered so that we can put a tone out to get your attention, and then follow it with a prerecorded voice message,” Burns said. “It doesn’t sound like a Jack in the Box drive-in. In a peak situation, you could be a quarter mile away and hear this clear as day.”
Though there are many other emergency alert services available to the UCLA community, the outdoor warning system was designed with the intention of getting emergency information out to the community as quickly as possible.
Currently, the Emergency Management Office broadcasts emergency information through BruinAlert using the emergency number 1-800-911-UCLA, on-screen emergency banners on almost 90 cable TV stations, the SMS text messaging system and AM 1630, a campus radio station that broadcasts general information, in addition to the chancellor’s campus-wide e-mail system.
Only 33 percent of UCLA students are signed up the SMS text messaging system, a figure that the emergency services office would like to bump up to 75 to 90 percent, Burns said.
Though UCLA is continuing to urge students to sign up for BruinAlert, the university recognizes that there are moments when information may not be accessible by cell phone, said Gail Cowling, executive office of UCLA General Services.
“The reason you have the “˜Big Voice’ is you don’t always have the phone. In class, you turn your phone off. When you’re walking around campus, you may not hear your phone ring,” Cowling said.
Theresa Avila, a third-year sociology student, agreed that although she is enrolled in it, the SMS text messaging service may not be too reliable, and the university would benefit from having an outdoor warning system.
“It’s a good idea. Text messaging is not too reliable, since people don’t always have their phones on them. This way information will get out more efficiently,” Avila said.
