WEATHER RADIOS
In the summer of 2007, many of the Library Building Emergency Coordinators (LBEC) attended a University of Florida training session, dedicated to increasing awareness of the role of the Building emergency coordinator program on campus. See http://www.ehs.ufl.edu/disasterplan/BEC.htm for details of the BEC program and the 2007 training.
During the training, purchase of weather radios for each buildings was advocated. Cathy Martyniak, 2007 Chair of the Disaster and Emergency Planning Committee, followed up on this suggestions and ordered 8 radios from Fisher Scientific via the Library Purchasing office. The radios arrived in October of 2007 and were distributed, one to each LBEC, soon thereafter. The radios are Oregon Sceintific Portable Weather Alert Radio, Model WR601. They can use either electric or battery (3 AA's) power.
Specific policies and procedures for use of the radio are set by the LBEC within each library building but in general include notification of upcoming weather events to staff within that Library via whatever notification method works best for that LBEC and that building.
SPECIFIC PLANS BY BUILDING
Library East (LE): (set Fall of 2007)
- The radio will be placed in Preservation, home Department of the LE LBEC, and set to automatically broadcast weather warnings for Alachua, Bradford, Columbia, Marion, Levy and Putnam counties.
- When an announcement is made that relates to severe weather that will affect the main UF campus ONLY, staff within Preservation will write up a brief email outlining the content of the notification. It will be sent to LE Departments including Systems, Special Collections, Acquisitions and Licensiing, Cataloging and Metadata and Latin American Center.
- The notification as described above would take place from 8a to 5p Monday through Friday.
- To track weather events that occur away from the main UF campus, or on nights and weekends, individuals might want to consider signing up for a weather alerting service such as Weather.com
