Since 9/11, some security experts have pushed the idea that peer-to-peer alert systems that rely on openness and the crowd can save lives, particularly when centralized communications and decision-making break down.As the nation comes to grips with the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, debate will turn inevitably to gun control, youth alienation and video-game violence. Emergency responders, meanwhile, will be asking tough questions about tactics and technology.

Why, given the ubiquity of SMS-enabled cell phones and the growing popularity of social networking and communication tools like Twitter and dodgeball.com, did it take so long for news to reach students that class had been canceled and that students should stay in their dorm rooms?

Next-generation emergency-alert systems have sprouted up across the country, aiming to bring better information and decision-making to disaster scenes. Some colleges are also exploring new emergency alert methods.

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Northern Illinois University, where a gunman killed five students and then himself, will assemble a task force to conduct an internal review into how it responded to the shooting, both immediately and in the weeks that followed. The task force, convened by the board of trustees, will also examine broader questions of mental illness on campus, investigating how universities can balance concerns about privacy with public safety. Cherilyn Murer, chairwoman of the board, said she hoped the review would contribute to a national discussion on campus shootings. Steven P. Kazmierczak, a graduate of the university, apparently went off medications before bursting into a lecture hall on Feb. 14 and shooting into the audience of students there.

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After a long day of agony for victims' parents and anxiety for police officers searching for explosives, the authorities this evening removed the bodies of 15 people killed in a massacre at Columbine High School on Tuesday. Among the dead were the two students who are believed to have unleashed the carnage before turning their guns on themselves. They were found shot in the head.

All day long, under sunny skies that turned slate gray with an approaching storm, students gathered near the high school for any news about friends still officially listed as missing. Many were crying or clutching flowers that they had brought to a makeshift memorial.

"I can't even imagine walking into that school right now,'" said 17-year-old Dara Ferguson, a junior, who had three friends whom she feared were dead. "I don't think I ever want to set foot in there again."

"If there had been even one armed guard in the school, he could have saved a lot of lives and perhaps ended the whole thing instantly," he said today in in Los Angeles.

There was, in fact, an armed guard at the school.

A sheriff's deputy assigned to the school, Neil Gardner of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department, exchanged gunfire with one of the gunmen shortly after the rampage began at 11:30 A.M. Two other patrol officers fired some shots about a half-hour later, said Steve Davis, a sheriff's spokesman.

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For half a century, there was not much change in this tiny eddy off the Garden State Parkway, until Monday night, when Winfield's little school, with an enrollment of 150 children, burned down.

"We don't have a church. It was the hub. It was the very core of the community," Mr. Greig said.

John Sims, a 13-year-old eighth grader, wondered where his graduation ceremony from the only school he has ever attended will be held. "You think it can't happen here," he said "Nothing bad ever happened here. Nothing dangerous. Some people think the Fire Department could not control the flames because nothing ever happened here."

Some fear that a sense of ease lulled the fire-fighting company into complacency.

It is still not clear how the fire started. Welders were changing the pipes in the old wooden building at the heart of the school, and there had been reports of smoke all day Monday. But the alarm did not ring out until just before 5 P.M., when everyone had left the building. Firefighters said that arson was not suspected.

Children were given the day off as parents and teachers tried to figure out how to keep them together through the end of the school year. For the time being the children are meeting in an overcrowded community center.

Everyone worries that the cuts will drive up the costs of the monthly assessments used to support the town, an average of about $300 per house. But they like the intensive attention for students at the small school, something not available in other blue collar towns. Tears ran down 12-year-old Jessica McMahon's cheeks. "I know the feelings we left in the building were abstract," she said, "but you could still feel them."

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Just hours after two graduate students at Louisiana State University were shot to death Thursday night in a campus apartment building, LSU officials used their new emergency-notification system to send text messages to about 8,400 students who had signed up for the service. Because of a technical glitch, however, an undetermined number of those messages never arrived.

"Some folks who are part of that system did not receive a notification by that particular means," said Sean C. O'Keefe, the chancellor, at a Webcast news conference on Friday morning. "We notified and consulted with the provider of that particular service at about 2 o'clock this morning and worked through a series of issues there. There are some technical challenges that they obviously encountered."

Stuart Watkins, a sophomore who is a member of the student government, said in an interview today that he had never received the emergency text message, despite having signed up for the service. He added that after asking around, "I haven't spoken to anyone who did receive the text message."

An announcement on LSU's Web site notes that the service is provided by ClearTXT. Officials of that company did not return calls for comment.

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