Emergency Preparedness

• Emergency Preparedness home

What's Inside

• Emergency Notification
  • UMD TXT-U Alerts (text message)
  • Tone-Alert Radios
  • Blastmail Email
  • Snow Hotline
  • Web Announcements
• Safety & Security
  • Promoting a Culture of Safety
  • Safety at the University
  • Dealing with Threats and the Potential for Violent Behavior
  • Personal Safety Tips
• Health Emergency
• Weather Emergency
• Emergency Scenarios
• Additional Resources

Additional Information

• University Police
• Department of Emergency Management
• Emergency Closings
• Environmental Health and Safety
• Facilities Management
• Health Services
• Housing
• Human Resources and Equal Opportunity
• Office of Student Conduct
• Safewalk Escort
• U of MN TC Emergency Preparedness

• UMD Home

Emergency Notification

The University of Minnesota Duluth uses a variety of communication systems to inform the campus community about an emergency situation.

UMD TXT-U Alerts for Emergency Text Messaging

The University of Minnesota has established a service to send text messages to cellular telephones in case of an emergency or weather-related campus closing. UMD participates in this service as part of the UM System. For more information or to sign up, see: Emergency text alerts. To ensure you receive these messages, you must sign up and provide your cell phone number. There will be a test each semester, in October and February, on the first Wednesday of the month at 1:15 PM. A smaller group of people will be used to test each month, but most users will get only two test messages each year. The service is spam and advertising free. There is no cost to subscribe.

Tone-Alert Radios (TARs)

Each UMD department has a tone-alert radio in the department office. At the onset of any emergency, a voice alert message will be broadcast through Tone Alert Radios (TARs) informing the campus community of the situation. TARs were strategically placed in selected offices throughout campus to ensure maximum coverage. Personnel in these offices are instructed to convey the emergency information immediately to their constituencies. As part UMD's emergency preparedness, a broadcast test message is sent every first Wednesday of the month at 1:00 PM.

Blastmail for Emergency Email

UMD has developed an email system intended to deliver a large number of messages as quickly as possible. This new system, which we call Blastmail, can deliver 12,000 messages in 55 seconds. New mailing lists of all students and all faculty and staff are generated on a regular basis, so that they will be ready to use at a moment's notice.

Snow Hot Line

The UMD Snow and Emergency Hotline can be reached by dialing (218) 726-SNOW (726-7669).

Web Announcements

Weather-related closings and other emergencies will be announced by placing an announcement on the UMD home page and on the Emergency Closings page. In the case of a severe emergency, where we need to reach the maximum number of people immediately, the entire UMD web site will be replaced with a single page for emergency information.

Information for Emergency Communicators (password required)