Wednesday, October 8th between 10:00am and 10:30am. Virginia Tech will conduct a campus-wide test of its emergency notification system.

During this event, the university will simultaneously test several elements of its emergency notification system, including
•The outdoor siren system;
•The university’s broadcast e-mail system, which sends a message to all student, faculty, and staff campus e-mail addresses (e-mails that end with @vt.edu);
• The emergency notification version of the university homepage;
• VT Alerts, which can send SMS (text) messages to mobile devises; instant messages to AOL, MSN, and Yahoo users; calls to home, office, or mobile phone numbers; and e-mails to non-Virginia Tech addresses; and
• The new electronic message boards in all general assignment classrooms.

In past years, the university has successfully tested individual elements of its emergency notification system; this test will deploy several elements simultaneously to more accurately simulate how the university community would receive important information during an actual event. Following, the test, all students, faculty, and staff will be asked to respond to a survey in order to help the university assess the test and better understand how the community received the test information. Participation in the survey is strongly encouraged in order provide the university with comprehensive feedback.

VT Alerts messages will appear from
• 89361 for text messages;
• (540) 232-1000 for phone calls; and
•rts@vt.edu for non-university e-mail accounts.

VT Alerts IMs [Please see Notes About IM below] will appear from
• nnnalert5 or nnnalert6 for AIM users;
• nnnalertp1a1@3nonline.com or nnnalertp1a2@3nonline.com for MSN users; and
• nnnp1a1 or nnnp1a2 for Yahoo users.

The subject line for the test message will be “TEST: Virginia Tech Emergency Notification System.” The message will begin with “This is a test of the Virginia Tech Emergency Notification System …”