In less than an hour, the first university-wide test of Temple’s new emergency preparedness system will get underway. The system, MiR3, was completely installed early last November 2007, as reported by The Temple News.It’s a three-pronged attack, an email to every Temple email account, a voice mail and text message to all students, staff and faculty who requested the service, and an emergency warning will be placed on the university’s Web site.To get signed up for the emergency alerts on your cell phone, students should go to the Update Address portion on Owlnet and staff should use http://ess.temple.edu. An email that was sent to students, staff and faculty gave few other details.

From 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 8, a test of the Temple University emergency notification system, TU-Alert, will be conducted. This will only be a test.”This test will accomplish several goals,” said Timothy O’Rourke, vice president of Computer and Information Services. “It will help us gain a better understanding of the TU-Alert system and its capabilities. In addition, the test will give us an opportunity to demonstrate the system’s strengths under non-emergency circumstances.”Finally, it is a chance to encourage everyone to sign up so that the university can contact them in case of a real emergency,” added O’Rourke.In addition to emergencies, O’Rourke said the system will be activated when weather conditions force the university to delay or cancel classes. 

What the simulated emergency will be is unknown and what its length – from 5 to 7 p.m. tonight will mean was not confirmed today.