UK Alert to be Tested at Noon Today

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 20, 2014) ― The University of Kentucky Police Department’s Division of Crisis Management and Preparedness (CMP) will conduct a test of the UK Alert system at noon today. UK Alert is an emergency notification system designed for use only when an incident disrupts normal campus operations or threatens the immediate health and safety of the campus community.

The test will include four components of UK Alert:

1.    A test notification will be sent to all registered devices, including email, text messages, voice calls, Twitter, and Facebook.

2.    Each Emergency Notification Tower (Outdoor Blue Emergency Phone) will flash, broadcast a series of tones, followed by a recorded message, and end with short tones.

3.    Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) desktop phones on Main Campus, and a select few VoIP phones off-campus, will relay emergency tones, display a TEST notification on the phone’s screen, and end with tones. (UK HealthCare will not be included in this portion of the test.)

4.    Approximately 130 desktop monitors will flash with a test message.

Go to the UK Alert website at http://www.uky.edu/EM/UKAlert/index.html to listen to the indoor and outdoor alert notifications and read an explanation for each.

Following the UK Alert test today, CMP is requesting members of the campus community complete a brief UK Alert survey.

All UK students, staff and faculty are registered in UK Alert with their official university email address. CMP encourages all of the University of Kentucky community to provide at least one other form of notification, i.e., a cell phone number to receive voice calls and/or text messages.

Students and faculty and staff members can update contact information via the myUK portal. Students can log into myUK and choose the "Student Services" tab where the UK Alert link can be found. Employees should log into myUK, choose the "Employee Self-Service" tab followed by the "UK Accounts & Services" link where the UK Alert link can be found under "UK Services." The myUK portal works optimally with Internet Explorer 9 (or lower) for PCs and Firefox for Apple products. Please report any issues to cmp@uky.edu.

Parents, media, visitors, and other interested parties may register for UK Alert on a voluntary self-subscription basis at https://www.getrave.com/login/uky.