Gov. Mark R. Warner approved a third set of recommendations from the Secure Virginia Panel on Monday, several of which suggest improvements to college and university safety plans.
The report emphasizes that despite the state budget crisis, ample funding for improved campus security can be appropriated from non-state funds.
"Most resources really need to come down from the federal level," Warner spokeswoman Ellen Qualls said.
An executive order from Warner formed the Secure Virginia Panel in January of this year. The group includes representatives from the legislature, state offices and private business.
Warner appointed the panel to suggest ways to improve Virginia's response to disasters of all kinds, including possible terrorist attacks.
Qualls said the recommendations seek to connect campus and regional response systems because terrorist events often strike across the legal boundaries of response teams.
"Most terrorist events don't care about city or county lines," Qualls said.
The most recent recommendation set includes suggestions to improve emergency management plans in areas with colleges and universities.
Colleges and universities would benefit from federal funding in order to collaborate and elaborate their safety plans, Qualls said.
"One of the keys in all kinds of terrorist attacks is to know where all your resources are and how to access them quickly," she said. "We should all be comparing notes right now."
The report's first recommendation seeks to "make certain college and university police agencies eligible for federal 'first responder' funding, which is administered by the state."
The funding helps campus police forces coordinate resources with local emergency management agencies.
Although campus police have done ongoing work to increase their radio communications, the current radio system allows only limited direct communications, University Police Capt. Michael Coleman said.
"The way our radios work, we are able to speak with several other jurisdictions, including the Charlottesville police, but we are not able via our radios to speak directly to the fire department or rescue squad," Coleman said. "We go through the dispatch center so that we can make a link with them, but it's not a direct connection like we make with our radios to the Charlottesville police."
Coleman said that in 1999 and 2000, campus police departments took a back-burner position for state communication systems funding.
"In the past, federal moneys that pass through the states for these purposes have been allocated to municipalities and counties," he said. "The state has to make up for whatever deficiencies from campus departments that don't get the grants."
Several other panel recommendations focus on better-articulated emergency management plans for campuses, which are likely to serve as shelter for the residential population in a crisis situation.
University spokesperson Louise Dudley said the University and the surrounding region have worked on coordinating emergency plans for over 10 years.
"There is a regional emergency plan that we have been involved in with the city and the county for several years," Dudley said. "It includes details about how emergency shelters would be established, it trains jointly the first responders from the city, the county and university personnel."
University Director of Utilities Cheryl Gomez said the University and Charlottesville emergency management plans have evolved over time.
"Each year, the city, county and University get together and do a mock emergency drill," Gomez said. "Things always come up and we audit the plan, and put in things that we didn't think of."
She said the plan, which covers diverse disaster situations ranging from hurricanes to terrorist attacks, covers contingency plans for loss of many types of utilities and plans to house displaced residents.
"We had really good practice when Tropical Storm Fran came through in 1998 and we had power outages everywhere," she said. "Trees were uprooted and we actually lost power from two major service stations that provide power to the hospital."
Chris Willis, University director of facilities management, said the University's power supply is geared toward providing enough emergency power to evacuate individuals from buildings. "If there was a huge area-wide power outage, we'd lose power too," Willis said. "But if a lightning strike took down a few feeders, we would probably lose only a few buildings for a short time."
(Cavalier Daily Senior Writer Kara Rowland contributed to this story.)
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