In the nightmare situation of Friday's shooting in Newtown, Conn., how did parents communicate? How did the school inform parents about what was happening, if their children were safe and what they can do?
Local police received a call from the school in Newtown around 9:30 a.m. ET Friday. A reverse 911 call was sent to parents informing them of the incident, according to USA Today. No word on exactly when the call went out to parents, but one parent told CNN she wasn't clear on which school the tragedy occurred at after hearing the phone message.
Parents rushed to the school to pick up their kids, as seen in a picture of cars lining up toward the school, Liz Dahlem, an NBC reporter in Connecticut posted on Twitter.
Numerous elementary schools around the country have alert systems in place in case such a situation occurs.
Contra Costa County, east of San Francisco, is one such school with a Community Warning System that notifies people via Twitter, Facebook, cellphone, Telephone Emergency Notification System (TENS), television and radio alerts and sirens in various areas.
Past school shootings have caused communities and school districts to examine ways to be safer and quickly communicate when crisis occurs.
After a school shooting earlier this year in Chardon, Ohio, that killed three students, numerous Ohio school districts began reviewing safety procedures and going through drills for worst-case scenarios.
Many universities became aware of how vital it is to quickly communicate with students in the event of a shooter. After the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 when 32 students were killed, the university was criticized for sending out the first email about the shooting to students two hours after the shooter killed his first victim on the campus. Since then, more universities and communities have been diligent about informing residents of possible dangers, like shootings.
Just this past September, the University of Charleston and the local police department had a drill to see how they would respond to two shooters entering the school. The campus alert system sent out automated text and email messages to students in the practice scenario. While some students received the message right away, for others it was delayed.
Robin Hattersley Gray, executive editor of Campus Safety Magazine, which covers best practices and lessons learned from tragic events like these, tells Mashable many schools have digital and social media protocols in place for notifying parents in the event of an emergency, though the policies themselves vary among districts and states. It is expected, however, since nearly everyone has a cellphone, that they will be contacted via SMS or email. Technology has made phone chains a thing of the past.
Gray says the beauty of social media is that everyone can be in touch at the same time. And parents can communicate with each other to share information.
Having technology in place to get and update information is useful only as long as it works. The Newtown School District website went down because of the traffic from media and the public after news of the shooting broke. Gray says although no one can imagine a tragedy like this will occur, servers need to be able to withstand the strain so parents don't get stranded.
At approximately 1:30 p.m. ET Friday, the school's website showed a warning to parents and visitors that an unconfirmed shooter was on the campus.
Andrea Smith contributed to this report
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