By Jordan Blum
The Advocate
BATON ROUGE, La. — LSU and state government have joined to open a new “command college” to train everyone from first responders to politicians for emergency preparedness and response leadership, state officials said Thursday.
LSU is developing the business plan for the command college, said Mark Cooper, director of the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
It would be on LSU’s burgeoning South Campus just off of Nicholson Drive.
Cooper told the legislative Joint Committee on Homeland Security that the college would work on three levels: training first responders, Office of Emergency Preparedness parish leaders and, finally, “executive” leaders ranging from police and fire chiefs to mayors and legislators.
Part of the key is just getting a lot of key people in the same room together, he said.
“This program will build relationships while it trains,” Cooper said, noting strong communication is as imperative as anything during emergencies.
The state is working primarily with LSU’s Stephenson Disaster Management Institute, formed in the E.J. Ourso College of Business in 2007.
The “command college” would also help many emergency first responders advance their careers, said Thomas Anderson, interim executive director of the Stephenson Institute.
Anderson said LSU is keen to work with both private industry and government on disaster management.
“Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, he (Cooper) is saying there’s lots of wheels out there. Let’s get them together,” Anderson said.
“This will be one of the best things that ever happens for communication,” said state Rep. Karen St. Germain, D-Pierre Part.
The Stephenson Institute also is working with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette to build a new Business Emergency Operations Center, also on LSU’s South Campus, Anderson said.
Calling it a “sneak peek” in its early stages, Anderson said the plan is for the center to serve as a command center for the private sector and non-profit groups during emergencies.
It will be working with UL-Lafayette’s National Incident Management Systems and Advanced Technologies Institute.
Cooper touted how state government has joined with the Stephenson Institute and LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication to develop elementary school education and outreach for the state’s Get a Gameplan hurricane preparedness campaign.
LSU students presented everything from educational board games starring a friendly alligator and his bayou friends to a hurricane checklist rap song.
Cooper said the plan is to expand these efforts into elementary schools in much of the state.
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