Disaster Preparedness and Response in Higher Education: Applying Lessons Learned From Healthcare

Introduction

Although health facilities and colleges and universities are quite different, they also have several similarities. Both have large numbers of people moving from place to place throughout a facility or multiple buildings with a larger geographic footprint. Although both facilities have records on who has appointments (in the case of health facilities), or who is to attend classes (in higher education), not everyone can be easily counted. Also, both places are likely to have external visitors, such a friends of family members, who are not easily accounted for in a disaster. In addition, higher education institutions and health facilities tend to have dense population of people in their facilities; both have people that have disabilities, although the instance of a disabled population is more common in health facilities.

There is a plethora of data on disaster preparedness in health facilities, yet there is a significant paucity of literature about disaster preparedness in higher education institutions. The majority of literature about higher education and disasters concerns student perceptions of training and preparedness (Coveleski, 2014; Izumi et al., Goddard et al., 2018; 2020; Kivunga et al., 2017; Matunhay, 2022; Mishra & Suar, 2011, Ozkazanc & Yuksel, 2016, Tan et al., 2016). Since the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, the disaster preparedness literature in higher education has concentrated primarily on managing pandemics of infectious disease (Izumi et al., 2020; Panganayi, 2020). Patel et al. (2020) and Tan et al. (2016) noted college students are one of the most vulnerable overlooked groups when a disaster occurs in a community because they are not permanent residents. However, there are so many more aspects of disaster preparedness that have been used and practiced in health care for decades that can easily translate to higher education institution disaster preparedness.

The Federal Emergency Management Association (2023a) defines a disaster as “the occurrence of a natural catastrophe, technological accidents or human-caused event that has resulted in severe property damage, deaths and/or multiple injuries” (p. 9). They define a large scale disaster as one that exceeds the response capability of the community and requires possible state or federal involvement. Natural catastrophes include things such as: tornadoes, severe drought, earthquakes, blizzards, hurricanes, pandemics, tsunamis, forest fires, etc. Technological accidents include things such as nuclear accidents, chemical accidents, industrial pollution, train or airplane accidents, release of biological agents from laboratories, and factory explosions or fires (Texas DEM, 2023). Human-caused events include acts of war, terrorism, biological warfare, crime, arson, civil disorder and cyber-attacks (Emergency Management, 2023). Klein and Irizarry (2023) note disasters can cause “injury, disease, illness, loss of life, destruction or property, damage to critical infrastructure and essential services” (p. 1). According to FEMA (2023b), disasters have four phases: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.