campus security: [july 2008]
Published: 07/04/2008
- Rise in Tornadoes, Floods Poses Risk to Colleges
From the article of the same title by: Carlson, Scott, Chronicle of Higher Education - A recent government report suggesting that extreme weather will be more common in the future raises questions on how climate change impacts colleges and universities. Many educational institutions are revising their disaster plans in the wake of the report and a series of recent weather events, including Hurricane Katrina and the recent flooding in Iowa. Officials at the University of Iowa put measures in place to ensure that the campus could withstand the type of flooding it dealt with in 1993. However, the recent flood was far more severe, prompting director of facilities management Donald J. Guckert to wonder if the university should update its security plan. Administrators at many coastal universities have taken an interest in climate change after Hurricane Katrina, planning for a cataclysmic hurricane.
At St. Mary's College of Maryland, which has been hit by three strong tropical storms or hurricanes over the past decade, officials are setting up additional evacuation sites in the event of another violent storm. This year, many colleges have been hit by tornadoes, including Tennessee's Union University, which sustained $40 million in damage in February. Several dormitories were destroyed, and administrators decided to rebuild them up to "coastal standards" to make it more likely that they will hold up against more violent weather. Climate change also impacts the insurance industry, though its potential impacts have yet to be modeled accurately. Union recently increased its business-interruption coverage after its previous insurance level was insufficient to deal with the tornado damage.
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