P1.35
Partnerships Help Save Lives
Ron Gird, NOAA/NWS, Silver Spring, MD; and R. Lopes
Partnerships amplify and broaden messages of awareness, preparedness, and increase the real-time broadcast and dissemination of weather forecasts and warnings to the public and the American business community. Messages are amplified when the National Weather Service (NWS) and its partners promote both science and safety to households, schools and the workplace. Recently, the NWS and some of its partners, including the American Red Cross, (ARC) the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and AWS Convergence Technologies are providing new educational material for the classroom. This will improve the effectiveness of informing the public and the American business community, ensuring they receive timely, accurate, and consistent messages before and during a severe environmental event, when time is precious.
The ARC and the NWS have incorporated lessons for children about hazard safety into its standards-based Masters of Disaster curriculum, as well as its timely new addition titled Facing Fear: Helping Young People Deal With Terrorism and Tragic Events. The EPA and the NWS recently updated and revised its SunWise School Program for teachers and students in grades K-8. EPA's SunWise School Program is an environmental and health education program teaching students and their caregivers how to protect themselves from over exposure to the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation. Participating schools receive a free Tool Kit, which includes cross-curricular classroom activities, a UV-sensitive frisbee, and community outreach information.
The FEMA is now supporting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in their efforts to expand NOAA Weather Radio capabilities to broadcast information for civil emergencies involving all hazards, not just weather-related events. A new NWS and FEMA tropical cyclone CD is available for teachers. The interactive CD, Hurricane Strike, is for middle school students and fits into most science curriculums. The CD has been distributed to the American Meteorological Society's teachers across the nation. The NWS has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with AWS Convergence Technologies. The MOU will allow the NWS to use the data from over 5,000 AWS weather stations. The data can be used in the NWS development models, responding in a more timely and accurate manner to any emergency and/or threats to life, health or property.
The ARC and the NWS are continually seeking new partnerships and improving existing partnerships which provide consistent science and safety information to the education community and the general public.
Poster Session 1, Poster Session: K-12, Popular and University Educational Initiatives
Sunday, 9 February 2003, 5:30 PM-7:00 PM
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