From storms that cause power outages to on-campus shootings, Lethbridge College seems to be prepared for it all.

   Ray Ambler, health and safety manager at Lethbridge College, says because of upgrades that have been put into practice and ones that are still in development, the college is prepared for a variety of emergencies.

            “We are revitalizing the health and safety and security programs. I believe we can handle a power outage and catastrophe. If we experienced the loss of a building due to a windstorm, flood or natural disaster, we could be back up and operational,” says Ambler.

            “(We have an) emergency response team and an incident communication team of people throughout the college.”

            Ambler says that most immediate emergency plans are broken down into three parts: dealing with evacuations and injuries, controlling the scene and business recovery.

            “Last year it wasn’t fully in place but it is now. We have a building evacuation team. If you saw the people in vests during our last fire drill, that was them,” says Ambler.  

            The college is also upgrading security measures to include assessing violence potential in students and staff on-campus. This includes an emergency response in case of a campus shooting.

            Ambler says the college hopes to have the threat assessment process fully in place for the beginning of next school year.

            “We want to know what’s happening to prevent it. This is what we call a ‘red light policy.’ It needs to be done right away.”

            He says the threat assessment policy is to mitigate the situation before it escalates to a dangerous level. This involves working with worrisome individuals who display potential high-risk behaviour, like weapon possession, threatening others, bomb threats and violence.

Ambler adds that Lethbridge College has yet to see an individual with high risk behaviour and there were 75 situations in which people were helped this semester.

Helping people involves getting them counselling and providing them with other assistance. Ambler notes that worrisome behaviour can build up from something as simple as stress from school and outside factors.

“A lot of students report incidents and we really appreciate it,” he says, adding that much like law enforcement, college staff don’t know what’s happening if no one tells them.

A survey about the security upgrades will be distributed among students and staff in the new year so everyone on campus can provide input.