TCC Ready

Your Emergency Response Matters

You may not feel in control during an emergency, such as an earthquake, fire, or active shooter event. But your response can help you, and the people around you, get through the emergency safely and recover more quickly afterwards. Here are some beneficial actions you can take in any emergency:

Stay Calm

• Allows you to think more clearly and make better choices.
• Helps the people around you stay calm, think more clearly and make better choices.
• Frees emergency responders, building safety stewards, and responders to focus on emergency response, rather than on your reaction to the emergency.

Follow Instructions

In an emergency, you may get instructions from:  

• TCC Alerts
• Campus Safety Officers
• Building Safety Stewards
• First responders, including emergency medical technicians, firefighters, and police officers

Follow those instructions to keep yourself and everyone else safe.

Help People Who Need Assistance

The people around you may need physical, medical, or emotional assistance before or after an emergency.

Physical Assistance

As you take whatever action is required in an emergency, provide whatever assistance is needed to people around you with disabilities and mobility issues if you can safely do so.

Medical Assistance

Provide only the level of medical care you are trained to provide. If you can’t provide medical care, you can still: 

• Point out people in need of medical assistance to first responders
• Wait with an injured person until help arrives.

Emotional Assistance

If someone near you seems to be having difficulty staying calm and coping with the emergency:

• Listen to the person and offer patience and encouragement.
• Try to help the person focus on the thing they need to do next, whether they need to evacuate the building or hide under their desk.
• Provide assurance that the emergency will end.
• Help the person contact family members if it’s safe to do so.
• Remind students that TCC offers free counseling for students and encourage them to make an appointment after the emergency.
• Remind employees of how to access employee counseling resources and encourage them to do so after the emergency.

Check TCC Communications for Updates

TCC Alerts will provide updates about ongoing situations. TCC may also post more detailed updates to college email, the TCC website, (tacomacc.edu/emergency)and social media. Campus Safety may communicate through building intercoms or via the yellow emergency towers positioned around campus. When the emergency is over, the college will send out an “all clear” communication via TCC Alerts.

Emergency Guides

The following pages offer guidance on what to do in specific emergencies. 

• Active Shooter
• Bomb Threat
• Disruptive Person
• Evacuations, Lockdown, and Shelter in Place
• Earthquake
• Fire
• Inclement Weather
• Medical Emergency
• Suspicious Package