What would you do? from MWSU Campus Watch on Vimeo.

The key, experts say, to surviving a natural disaster, anything from a tornado to a flash flood to an ice storm, is having a plan.

University officials have a Disaster Policy — a policy buried inside the official policy and procedures manual and not updated since 2006.

The policy does gives detailed instructions on what members of staff and students should do in the event of a tornado, fire and bomb threat but does leave you asking is this the best that can be done?

The search to find the answers to this questions brought me to three students who, as it turns out, were actually working on a way to get this information to students but just hadn’t figured it out yet.

The group of computer science majors had been working on a update to the official My myMWSU android app, and when asked if they were aware of what students should do in the event of a disaster. “Nope. No there hasn’t been any publicized information on that kind of stuff,” said Simba Rashe-Musarurwa.

Then something interesting happen. The group decided then and there to include alert information in an update for the app.

“Say if there were a tornado for example, you could push notifications to everyone that has the android app downloaded saying this tornado (his incoming) and (you should) do this,” said Carson Bath.

The group also plans to link the app to the existing message alert system that campus police already utilize.

Here are a few basic tips that may help in the event of a disaster.