GW released an “after action review” of officials’ September shelter-in-place order earlier this month, reporting ambiguity in the safety guidance the University issued in the hours that followed the escape of a murder suspect on campus.
The day after a police manhunt to find Christopher Haynes, a 30-year-old murder suspect who escaped custody near GW Hospital in early September and triggered a four-hour campus shelter-in-place order, GW’s Office of Emergency Management began the process of collecting feedback from more than 150 faculty, staff and students about the University’s response to the incident. After faculty and staff said they had not received adequate emergency preparedness training in their responses, GW will now denote four protective actions — shelter, secure, lockdown and evacuate — to emergency situations to clarify officials’ guidance, per the release.
“The GW community identified that GW Alert messaging was sometimes unclear, and the term ‘shelter in place’ was ambiguous and subject to various interpretations,” the release states.
GW will label “shelter” situations as those involving a natural disaster, “secure” will tell students to remain indoors during suspected criminal activity, and a lockdown involves locking interior doors, turning off lights and avoiding being seen in windows, per the GW Safety website. GW will provide specific information pertaining to each emergency following its initial protection action.
GW will also utilize two modes for GWorld tap access to buildings: safety mode, which restricts building access to only people with tap access like students, faculty and staff, and emergency mode, which restricts access to only permit emergency responders. The release states that students, faculty and staff praised the promotion of mental health resources after the shelter-in-place, and the use of mental health resources did not change after the incident.
“The University will continue to implement improvements based on the lessons learned throughout this process,” the release states.
