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Normal Radford University operations will be disrupted for approximately four hours on Wednesday, Oct. 22, beginning at 10 a.m. Emergency personnel will be participating in a full-scale exercise that will simulate a large-scale emergency incident. Not all of the RU campus will be affected at the same time, or for the full four hours, and some buildings and departments will not be affected at all.
RU’s Office of Emergency Preparedness will be working with the City of Radford, the Virginia Department of Emergency Management and other state and regional emergency responders to test existing plans and procedures governing response to an emergency incident. "The university and the participating agencies will gain a tremendous amount of experience and operational feedback that will be invaluable to improving our response to an actual incident," said Dennie Templeton, director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness. The exercise will feature the activation and use of the RU Alert Notification Technology to deliver messages to RU students, staff and faculty with instructions to be followed as if the incident were real. "The text of the message will be explicit in saying that the event is a drill, but will provide directions that will need to be followed by the RU community on that day," said Todd Branscome, coordinator of emergency preparedness. "However, we want to minimize any undue worry and are asking the RU student community to please notify those listed on their RU Alert Notification account in advance that the event about which they will be notified on that day is a drill." The exercise will include use of the university’s siren system and will feature university staff and students acting as casualties, complete with theatrical makeup, being treated on-site by emergency personnel. According to Templeton, RU’s emergency response objectives will be to assist in identifying, responding to and controlling the incident while protecting the RU community.
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Radford 
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