The Background
On Friday, March 15th, 2019 the town of Christchurch New Zealand was the focus of a terrorist incident. Two consecutive terrorist mass shootings occurred at the Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre. The attacks began at the Al Noor Mosque in the suburb of Riccarton at 1:40 pm and continued at the Linwood Islamic Centre at about 1:55 pm. The attacks killed 50 people and injured 50 more.
The Solution
Lincoln University, an AppArmor institution approximately 20 KMs away from the shooting, acted quickly to initiate a campus lockdown. The lockdown consisted of a mass notification via the SafeLU app (powered by AppArmor) and a simultaneous “loud horn” emergency notification. The notifications from the app reached all users in 1-5 seconds. Additional details were also posted to the app on current campus conditions so that students, faculty and staff could view timely, relevant and accurate information provided by the Lincoln Emergency Management group.
We immediately pushed out alerts as our lockdown sirens sounded, and over the next few hours we were able to keep providing updates to the campus via the app and complete a staged evacuation of the campus.
The lockdown was lifted after approximately 3 hours once conditions were confirmed safe. Police in the region praised the quick response of Lincoln University to lock down the campus and protect its students, faculty and staff.