A helicopter and hundreds of state agency officials will descend on Eastern today for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency’s 2012 state-level exercise.

The drill is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. and concluded by noon. There will be a press conference at 3 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

William Weber, the vice president for business affairs, and Dan Nadler, the vice president for student affairs, co-chair Eastern’s Emergency Management Team, which reacts to different campus emergencies that require the mobilization of the team.

As vice president of business affairs and co-chairman of the EMT, Weber is the primary chair on today’s simulations. Weber’s sector of the EMT deals with all emergencies that pertain to campus facilities or natural disaster.

The Emergency Management Team is compromised of eight department directors including University Housing and Dining, Media Relations, Counseling Center, Health Service, Minority Affairs, International Students, Student Services and Facilities Planning and Management.

It also includes the University Police Department chief, judicial officer and the safety officer.

“It’s going to be a good thing for the campus—going to give a lot of our employees the opportunities to interface with state emergency responders,” Weber said.

Nadler said the drill will be starting at the power plant.

“We are also fortunate that we had a facility in the old steam plant that is kind of in a standby mode now and can be used for a lot of the exercises,” Weber said.

Weber also said there is a primary scenario, but it will not be the only incident.

“Did you ever watch the series called ‘24’—it had one big plot line, but every week there was something different,” he said. “There are several sub-incidents that are all part of the big scenario.”

There are so many different things that could happen on a college campus that focusing on one incident would not be maximizing on the resources available during the exercise, Nadler said.

Adam Due, the chief of the University Police Department, said one incident will involve an “active shooter” and various other simulations that would naturally spur local or state interference.

Due said the officers scheduled on duty at the time will respond to the initial incident.

“If it was real-life—you are calling in officers and one might get here in 15 minutes another might take an hour,” Due said.

Because of time constraints, Due said the officers on duty will be ready and awaiting the incident call instead of them responding in real time.

Due said more than just those initial UPD officers will be able to participate in the simulations.

“Once we’ve gotten through the scenario, we’ll reset it and let another group of officers go through,” he said.

Officers that started out working on the simulations will switch with those on patrol, Due said.

In 2011, the emergency testing took place Western Illinois University. The geographic location of the statewide drill changes each year.

The Charleston, Mattoon and Lake Land police departments as well as the Charleston, Mattoon, Decatur, Champaign and Urbana fire departments will also be participating.

When done members of the UPD will then reflect on each exercise before an all-around analysis by the state, Due said.

For the all-around analysis, Due said it is important that other campus departments are there as well.

“When you go back through that to review…those people need to be there to review that and see what we can come up with to improve things,” he said.

Weber said during the planning stage the university looked for ways to incorporate the requests of different organizations.

“Each agency would indict ‘well our agency would really like the opportunity to practice this’ and so we would try to build that into the scenario,” he said.

All of the participating organizations had the option to indicate what skills they wanted to improve upon, Weber said.

“For (Eastern) something we really want to emphasize is the communication both with in campus and with the state agencies, so that will be the emphasis in the part of the exercise we will be involved with,” Weber said.

Nadler said the exercise also keeps Eastern incompliance with state law, which dictates a state institution must train for a violent emergency once a year.

The usual training takes place during the late spring or summer, Nadler said.

Because of a grant given to Eastern by the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, Eastern will not be incurring any costs, Weber said.

Eastern also will be sending out text messages through EIU Alert, but Weber said it will be similar to the system testing that occurs the first Tuesday of every month and that it will have a disclaimer.

Weber and Nadler both said the exercises will have little or no impact on the summer classes.

“For the most part the exercise will be contained in the steamplant, in McAfee and in Carman—we will try to minimize the impact on our normal operations,” Weber said. “(But), don’t be surprised if you see a helicopter circling overhead.”

Nike Ogunbodede can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].