While Illinois State University students were away for spring break, severe weather rolled through McLean county.
During this break, ISU’s Emergency Management continued to work to put plans in place, in case of a weather emergency on campus.
“We’re planning for the bad day,” Eric Hodges said. “We should spend about 90 percent of our time planning. We’re writing plans, we’re talking to people, we’re doing drills and exercises, and we’re doing training sessions.
Along with creating plans, emergency management also spends their time tracking and monitoring dangerous weather near the Bloomington-Normal area.
“We’ve seen some significant tornado outbreaks in the last number of years that we wouldn’t normally see,” Hodges said. “And we just saw one a couple of days ago.
The tornado that touched down in Kankakee on March 10th was deemed by the National Weather Service as an EF-3, marking it a severe storm on the intensity scale.
“A lot of people don’t think about emergencies and disasters until they’re right in the middle of it, or after,” Hodges said. “Our job, and my profession has had this problem before, is how do we get people’s attention before?”
The Safe Redbirds app is the official safety app for ISU, and it allows students to stay up to date in emergency situations.
The app provides services like a map of campus, a virtual blue light system, and even a page for Pawfficer Korg.