On January 1, Texas Children’s started moving forward with a multi-phased plan to use plain language for emergency communications. The plan began with a change to our alert, or readiness, levels and retires all Carla-related language.
“At Texas Children’s, Carla has been used to indicate a significant, institutional emergency, but because the word is also the name of the infamous 1961 Category 5 hurricane, it typically is associated with a weather-related event,” said Melissa Murrah, director of Risk Management, Emergency Management and Environmental Health and Safety. “Unfortunately, the risks we face today are more varied and complex than just hurricanes, tropical storms or flooding, therefore, we need to move toward a way of communicating emergency events more clearly and efficiently across the organization.”
The move to plain language was recommended by Emergency Management and is in alignment with our partners at the Texas Hospital Association. Texas Children’s executive leadership and members of the Operations Coordinating Council approved the move last year.
The first step in this change for Texas Children’s is the replacement of our readiness levels and Carla language with simpler, more intuitive levels combined with plain language instructions. These new plain language readiness levels are:
- Normal operations – passive monitoring
- Advisory – active monitoring
- Alert – preparing for action
- Partial activation – some sections of incident command system set-up
- Full activation – all sections of incident command system set-up
Our Emergency Operations Plan has been updated with this language. All future notifications will come in the form of specific instructions from Incident Command, which will help prevent confusion and ensure appropriate actions are taken at the right time.
Departments should work with Emergency Management to update departmental plans and replace the Carla language. In addition, please ensure you have updated your personal contact information in MOLI so that you receive all emergency notifications. Click here for detailed instructions.
If you have questions, contact Emergency Management at ext. 4-2139.