It was a slow and quiet morning at CiTR 101.9 FM’s office on the lower level of the Nest on October 28, 2024. The radio’s Station Manager Jasper Sloan Yip and Music & Volunteer Manager Aisia Witteveen were the only people there when Witteveen noticed a stream of people rapidly moving toward the atrium’s exit outside the office window just after 11 a.m.
“Everyone got up at the same time and left the Nest, and then everyone was moving quicker and quicker. And I’m like, ‘Oh, I think something’s happening but I don’t really know because there isn’t an alarm,” Witteveen said in an interview with The Ubyssey.
The two poked their heads outside the entrance and asked a passerby what was happening. The person responded that the crowd was being told to evacuate the building with no clear reason why.
As Yip recalled, he and Witteveen watched as people ran down the steps and across the whole floor, any which way that got them to the closest exit.
“It was pretty confusing,” said Yip. “We could sense that it was urgent … we’ve never seen people rush out like that.”
The Nest was evacuated due to what was believed to be an active gunman in the building. It was later confirmed in a Campus Security update that RCMP arrested a youth who had been carrying a water gun, not a firearm.
Though the youth wasn’t carrying a weapon, the Nest was evacuated with the belief they were — and the chaos and confusion that ensued in the moments before they were arrested spurs questions about what protocols are in place at one of campus’s busiest hubs in the event of an active threat.
‘This is not a drill’
According to a November 2024 statement from AMS Senior Communications and Marketing Manager Eric Lowe, the Nest follows the same procedures as the rest of the university as outlined by UBC Safety & Risk Services in the event of an active threat.
UBC Safety & Risk Services’ protocol for an active threat is to run, hide and fight.
According to Lowe, it was still unclear as to whether or not the suspect posed a real threat to the Nest’s occupants or what area of the Nest was dangerous at the time of the evacuation. Despite this, the only advisory given to students was to evacuate.
“May I have your attention please, clear the building, this is not a drill. I repeat, please clear the building, this is not a drill.”
This evacuation announcement played just after 11 a.m.
According to Lowe, the assistant building operations manager was instructed to make the announcement after being asked by the RCMP, who arrived within minutes of an independent call made by a student. The suspect was later apprehended on the third floor.
Directly above CiTR 101.9 FM’s office, fourth-year student Cas Murray was working a typical shift at Blue Chip Cafe on the main level.
“We just saw everyone leaving the Nest, and we were like, ‘I guess we should go,’” said Murray.
“None of us actually heard the announcement,” Murray said. “Even if there was [one], I wouldn’t have been able to hear it because it was really busy at work.”
There are “speakers spread throughout the building, primarily in open spaces like the hallways and atrium, large rooms like the great hall and performance theatre,” wrote Lowe.
But between Murray, who was working on the open area of the main level, and Yip and Witteveen in their lower level offices with the doors shut, none of them heard the announcement.
UBC also did not release an alert announcement during or following the incident. UBC Alert is the university’s mass notification system to send alerts in urgent situations that pose an immediate safety or security risk to the community, and is dispersed across the UBC Safe App, UBC’s main website, UBC Media Relation’s X account (@ubcnews) and digital signage across campus.
According to a Safety & Risk Services statement sent to The Ubyssey, “This particular incident evolved very rapidly and was quickly and safely resolved by the RCMP. As such, it was not necessary or appropriate for UBC Alert to be triggered.”
But as relevant literature notes, mass notification that provides accurate and timely information, specifically combined with other forms of communication, may motivate building occupants to take appropriate actions, whereas ambiguous information might result in the opposite.
Those who didn’t hear the announcement, were in an isolated part of the building or didn’t cross paths with security sweeping the common areas may have completely missed instructions to evacuate. So what are the policies that govern such uncertain situations?
Understanding policies
Safety & Risk Services’ active threat response works closely in parallel with the UBC Disaster Management Policy, SC10, which draws procedures from the BC Emergency Management System, a recognized standard system for emergency response within the province.
SC10 outlines steps needed in the preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation of negative impacts toward UBC’s community, property and environment in the event of an emergency or disaster. According to Lowe, October 28, 2024 was considered an emergency evacuation, which corresponds to subsection 3.2.1 of the policy.
But SC10 doesn’t outline how this procedure is supposed to unfold from building to building on campus — the Building Emergency Response Plan (BERP) does, and as a page of the UBC Safety & Risk Services website states, all UBC buildings should have their own.
The BERP’s document template is easily accessible online through Safety & Risk Services. Among other objectives, it aims to “establish a systematic method of safe and orderly evacuation of an area or building, in case of fire, bomb threat, earthquake, explosions, fires, gas leaks, or release of hazardous materials.”
According to the SC10, which Lowe said the Nest is subject to in the event of a threat, “If a building evacuation or a fire alarm is activated, all occupants must evacuate as per the building’s BERP procedure.”
The Nest’s operations are overseen by the AMS, and Lowe wrote the AMS Health and Safety Manual outlines evacuation procedures for the Nest. When asked for more details about the AMS Health and Safety Manual, Lowe did not respond in time for publication.
“Every situation is unique and depending on the circumstances, a slightly different response may be required,” wrote Lowe. “In these emergency situations, we take direction from the RCMP … [and] do our best to ensure the safety of all those in the Nest.”
He went on to write that if a real threat was posed to the Nest, the AMS would work closely with UBC and RCMP to follow SC10.
But what about incidents like this one, where law enforcement and security cannot determine the level of danger during an active potential threat and are therefore underprepared to properly inform the public to maximize mass safety?
Since the incident, the AMS has met with Campus Security and RCMP to debrief the situation, and Lowe said the AMS is currently reviewing policies to identify other muster points for “different scenarios.”
Confusion on Reddit
Murray doesn’t think the evacuation was handled well. Aside from emphasizing that no one knew why the building was being cleared, they remembered seeing people who had just arrived at the Nest, unaware there was a potential threat, enter and leave the building.
“They didn’t secure the building properly,” said Murray. “The building was unlocked and wasn’t being secured at all, so people were walking in.”
Lowe wrote that Campus Security officers were stationed at various entrances to try and prevent people from entering the Nest, but that “there are many entry points to the Nest, RCMP were inside telling anyone that they saw to evacuate the building.”
Other students took to Reddit to express their confusion, with one user writing, “Wtf I walked into the basement and nobody stopped me I was so confused that there was nobody there,” in an r/UBC subreddit on the incident.
“Trying to figure out what it was. No fire alarms went off or anything. Police/campus security was there first, telling people to leave. Way too many possibilities,” wrote another user within the same thread.
While the Nest has specific predesignated evacuation meeting points for fires and earthquakes, the incident last October highlights the importance of putting such protocols in place for active threats in the building.
The evacuation came just days after the RCMP reported an increase in weapons seized from teens by North Vancouver Youth officers, a trend that has been on the rise in the Lower Mainland over the last few years. In 2019, Vancouver Police seized 163 replica firearms, and, in 2020, seized 213, with over 80 per cent of the people involved being offenders known to police.
Despite increasing numbers regarding youth weapons and replica firearm seizures, AMS Security patrols have not been restored since employees were laid off and placed on recall in August 2016.
Last October’s Nest incident also isn’t the first of its kind. Following a Reddit post about a man with a firearm in the Nest in June 2018, The Ubyssey later confirmed with the suspect that the incident was a “big misunderstanding,” and that the suspected weapon was a pellet gun.
Comments from both the AMS and UBC suggest that very different measures would have been taken that day if a legitimate active threat was identified. Each member of the AMS Health & Safety Committee is required to complete a day-long safety and response course offered by BCFED Health & Safety Centre.
According to the Safety & Risk Services statement sent to The Ubyssey, “students can also access relevant information through the Safety & Risk Services website and the UBC Safe App and at annual engagement events like ‘Ready Week’ and ‘ShakeOut’ where Emergency Management makes available hard copy materials that are also available in student residences and community centres.”
Also offered to students are a variety of emergency preparedness training workshops, including specific active shooter preparedness online training. The courses are offered online via the CWL login, or in a small group setting. The training gives students the opportunity to learn more about active shooter situations and UBC’s approach to maximizing campus safety.
But these resources are not widely distributed, presenting a potential knowledge gap between community understanding and institutional safety procedures.
As another Reddit user wrote, “Very lucky this was nothing extremely serious. This should be a wake up call to UBC that the emergency plans it has in place are not adequate.”
Though UBC’s evacuation protocols often relate to the AMS’s, the AMS remains responsible for its own guidelines, which are currently being reviewed to account for incidents that warrant an evacuation, regardless of their outcome.
“We will review our systems and procedures following this incident to determine if there are adjustments or enhancements required in consultation with UBC and RCMP,” Lowe wrote.
Share this article
First online