About

The goal of Virginia Tech Emergency Management is to build, improve, and sustain university resilience, departmental readiness, and individual preparedness.

The office takes an all-hazards approach to continuously further the capability of the Virginia Tech community to plan for, mitigate against, respond to, and recover from an incident or emergency.
 

StormReady University

In 2010, Virginia Tech became the first college or university in Virginia — and just the 50th in the United States — to complete the StormReady® program with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service. Since then, the university has completed the renewal process twice.

The StormReady program helps communities develop plans to handle severe weather and flooding threats. It provides communities with information and resources from a partnership between local National Weather Service forecast offices and state and local emergency managers. It began in 1999 with seven communities in the Tulsa, Okla., area. There are now more than 1,500 StormReady communities across the country.

To be recognized as StormReady, a community must

• Establish a 24-hour warning point and emergency operations center;
• Have more than one way to receive severe weather forecasts and warnings and to alert the community;
• Create a system that monitors local weather conditions;
• Promote the importance of readiness through community seminars;
• Develop a formal hazardous weather plan, which includes training severe weather spotters and holding emergency exercises.