IUPUI’s Emergency Preparedness Manager
Diane Mack worries a lot. In fact, she is a professional class worrier.
When she sees expanses of glass, Mack cringes. When large crowds gather, she is anxious. Mack can't help but look for potential threats and danger.
It all comes with the territory of working to make sure the campus has the right policies, equipment, and procedures to keep everyone on campus as safe as can be.
Mack, who had been director for strategic planning at the Indiana Department of Homeland Security, joined IUPUI on January 2, 2008 as the Emergency Preparedness Manager.
At Homeland Security, Mack helped set the course the state took when it came to developing homeland security and emergency management initiatives. In her new role, she will help develop plans to protect the campus from hazards that come with being a major urban university.
With a degree in industrial hygiene from Purdue University in 1996 in hand, Mack went to work for the Indiana Department of Labor. When the 9-11-01 attacks occurred, she watched damaged buildings burn and crumble, and prepared her staff of safety and health consultants to respond. They were dispatched to New York to assist with the aftermath of the terrorist attack, but because she was pregnant and could not risk being exposed to lead, which was present in the buildings, she remained as support in Indiana.
These events, combined with reading "Demons in the Freezer" a book about a major bioterrorist event in the United States, led to a career shift. As Mack put it, she had been engaged in the field of occupational health and safety protecting people from chemicals. In Homeland Security, she protected chemicals from people.
After Hurricane Katrina, everyone in the homeland security and emergency management field was put to the test. Mack helped coordinate the influx of evacuees from Louisiana and Mississippi into Indiana, and has played a major role in changing the state's plans to reflect lessons learned from Katrina.
At IUPUI, Mack says she has a "phenomenal opportunity" to forge a fully comprehensive emergency management plan, taking the focus from incident specific responses to big picture prevention and expanded planning and response capabilities.
Among her initial goals:
• Develop a full-scale campus risk assessment.
• Expand interoperable communications efforts (including IU-Notify).
• Develop continuity of operations planning, making sure all offices and departments have appropriate plans in place that would enable them to continue operating if they had to relocate.
• Develop a comprehensive emergency management plan that addresses all hazards.
• Continue pandemic influenza (pan flu) planning.
• Conduct a leadership exercise.
Part of her job, Mack says, is to help the campus look at the consequences of events that could happen on campus. "Our status as a large urban university requires that we be prepared to deal with any potential adverse events. In terms of what happened during Hurricane Katrina, it's not acceptable to plan for the typical category 3 storm when there is the possibility of a category 5."
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