Clarksville, TN – In the last several weeks, Montgomery County has been under many flood, severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings – and Austin Peay State University’s emergency team has reacted quickly to alert the campus community.
For instance, whenever tornado warnings are received, APSU sends text and email messages to students, faculty and staff, and the outdoor public address system brings weather warnings to attention.
Because of APSU’s efforts to keep the campus informed of weather situations, the National Weather Service has certified APSU as a StormReady community.
To commemorate the designation, a brief presentation of the StormReady sign to be placed on the APSU main campus will be held at 10:00am, Tuesday, May 24th in the lobby of the Browning Administration Building.
StormReady is a nationwide community preparedness program that uses a grassroots approach to help communities develop plans to handle all types of severe weather — from tornadoes to tsunamis. The program encourages communities to take a new, proactive approach to improving local hazardous weather operations by providing emergency managers with clear-cut guidelines on how to improve their hazardous weather operations.
To be certified StormReady, a community must achieve the following criteria:
- Establish a 24-hour warning point and emergency operations center
- Have more than one way to receive severe weather warnings and forecasts and to alert the public
- Create a system that monitors weather conditions locally
- Promote the importance of public readiness through community seminars
- Develop a formal hazardous weather plan, which includes training severe weather spotters and holding emergency exercises.
APSU joins four other universities in Tennessee as StormReady sites: Tennessee Tech University, University of Memphis, University of Tennessee-Knoxville and Vanderbilt University.
There are 72 universities in the nation designated as StormReady.
