UNM to Test Emergency Notification Systems Monday, Feb. 4

On Mon­day, Feb. 4 at 11:02 a.m., the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico will con­duct a test of its emer­gency noti­fi­ca­tion sys­tems. The test will include all parts of the University’s warn­ing sys­tems includ­ing sirens, e-mail, text mes­sag­ing, social media page updates and UNM web page updates.

“UNM tests the sys­tem each semes­ter to famil­iar­ize the cam­pus com­mu­nity with our var­i­ous sys­tems, to remind peo­ple to update their emer­gency noti­fi­ca­tion data and pref­er­ences, and to encour­age every­one to review their indi­vid­ual and orga­ni­za­tional pre­pared­ness mea­sures,” said Byron Piatt, Uni­ver­sity Emer­gency man­ager. “It also gives our first respon­ders an oppor­tu­nity to acti­vate the var­i­ous sys­tems as part of their rou­tine training.”

To pre­pare for the test, all UNM and UNMH staff, fac­ulty, affil­i­ates and reg­is­tered stu­dents are asked to log into the LoboAlerts site and update their emer­gency noti­fi­ca­tion infor­ma­tion and pref­er­ences. The LoboAlerts sys­tem can store and con­tact up to three cell phones and three e-mail addresses per per­son. Although one can choose to receive either text or e-mail mes­sages, or both, one can­not com­pletely opt out of the sys­tem. UNM will use this sys­tem only for impor­tant infor­ma­tion related to the safety and well being of our cam­pus com­mu­nity, and we want to reach as broad of an audi­ence as possible.

Dur­ing the test UNM will sound the sirens for approx­i­mately one minute. A pause will fol­low the sirens for approx­i­mately one minute, and then an “all clear” siren will be sounded for approx­i­mately one minute. At the same time, text and e-mail mes­sages will be sent via LoboAlerts, and alerts will appear on web­sites and social media sites.

Siren Sam­ples
Lis­ten to Emer­gency Alert
Lis­ten to All ClearIn an actual emer­gency or inci­dent, indi­vid­u­als should seek shel­ter in the near­est build­ing and look for addi­tional infor­ma­tion. If you receive a LoboAlerts text or e-mail, you are asked to fol­low any instruc­tions it con­tains and to share the infor­ma­tion with peo­ple around you, in case oth­ers have not received their alerts yet. Addi­tion­ally, indi­vid­u­als should only con­tact the police depart­ment if they have first hand infor­ma­tion about the inci­dent that would aid in their response. All too often the phone lines get flooded with indi­vid­u­als ask­ing ques­tions, which could hin­der their response. Sim­i­larly, there is no need to call the police dur­ing an exer­cise of the cam­pus warn­ing siren system.

Piatt also sug­gests that indi­vid­u­als add the num­bers 26787 and 67283 to their address books as LoboAlerts. The num­bers are the com­mon short codes used by the sys­tem to send the mes­sages. It is help­ful to see a text mes­sage com­ing from “LoboAlerts” rather than some unknown number.

“Dur­ing the weather alerts last year, we received reports of peo­ple not receiv­ing text mes­sages,” said Piatt. “In many cases we have found that the indi­vid­ual never entered their tele­phone num­ber, entered it incor­rectly or failed to check the text mes­sag­ing box. We encour­age every­one to select both the text and e-mail options.”

On aver­age, text mes­sages are deliv­ered 10 times faster than the e-mail mes­sages. The time­li­ness of text mes­sage receipt can vary, how­ever, based upon type of phone, car­rier, loca­tion or bat­tery strength.

“There is no sin­gle, guar­an­teed way to reach every­one all of the time, so we employ many dif­fer­ent meth­ods,” said Piatt. “It is in everyone’s best inter­est to try and receive all of those types of messages.”

Friends and fam­ily mem­bers and other non-UNM per­sons includ­ing those who work on cam­pus, live in nearby com­mu­ni­ties or oth­er­wise have an inter­est in receiv­ing emer­gency noti­fi­ca­tions can receive LoboAlerts emer­gency noti­fi­ca­tions as well, either by fol­low­ing LoboAlerts at http://tinyurl.com/LoboAlerts and http://twitter.com/loboalerts pages or by cre­at­ing an account on the http://www.getrave.com/login/unmcommunity site.

For more infor­ma­tion and Fre­quently Asked Ques­tions visit: LoboAlerts.

Media con­tact: Steve Carr (505) 277‑1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu