The emergency module allows you to override the normal layout and content of your site in the event of an emergency. It is primarily designed for institutional websites (such as universities), but could be used by any site that needs to broadcast urgent information to visitors.
By declaring an emergency, non-essential block regions can be hidden and information related to the emergency (such as contact numbers) can be shown instead. This gives critical information more visibility, and allows you to quickly disable non-critical, bandwidth-intensive content to better endure increased site traffic. You can also define multiple emergency levels with different sets of overrides. For example, you could have a "closure" level that is used to declare a campus closure due to inclement weather, and a separate "public safety issue" level for life-threatening situations.