By Gail Sanders, Reporter
Edited by Star Pompa, Editor
StormReady, as defined by the National Weather Service, “is a voluntary program offered as a means of providing guidance and incentive to communities interested in improving their hazardous weather operations.” Berry College is one of several communities that has officially earned the title of StormReady.
StormReady is a program designed to help communities navigate hazardous weather conditions by requiring different qualifications and providing management guidelines for emergencies. Berry’s Assistant Vice President for Campus Safety and Land Management, Gary J. Will, described the process the college had to go through to achieve its official StormReady title.
“We didn’t have to make any changes,” Will said, when asked about what Berry College had to do to be StormReady.
Will described the different qualifications needed to achieve storm readiness. One of these requirements was for a community to have a station that is operated 24/7. Berry College has the Welcome Center, a building located by its main entrance, which has workers stationed there around the clock who monitor the weather and send out alerts when necessary.
Despite being ready for storms in a technical sense, Berry College also must be prepared to deal with the aftermath of storms. After a major storm, the campus is known to buzz with activity from the differing crews assisting in cleanup.
Mountain Grounds Supervisor Marcus Kane Phillips provided information about the logistics of storm cleanup for Berry College’s Grounds Crew. Their team mainly specializes in the process of tree clean-up. They first secure a perimeter and then work their way down the tree with chainsaws, separating the brush from the limbs.
“We separate the processed from the unprocessed so that the ground crews can start pulling and stacking appropriately,” Phillips said.
Phillips spoke on the importance of students being careful during storm clean up. Workers
operate heavy machinery that can be dangerous to those who are not trained to be around it.
“Stay inside until everything is clear,” Phillips said. “Be very careful not to clog the work areas with curiosity.”
There are also environmental consequences to storms. Environmental Science and Studies Professor Dr. Zack Taylor said there are both safety and ecological concerns when looking at the effects storms can have.
According to Taylor, storms fall under the broader category of disturbances. Disturbances are anything that interfere with the natural state of things. Some common disturbances are droughts, fires, and storms. The effects of different disturbances could compound. For example, droughts could cause storms to be more devastating by weakening trees, making them more likely to fall.
“There are environmental risks in all of this,” Taylor said.
However, disturbances are a natural part of the ecosystem as the flora and fauna of nature are used to them and the changes they bring. Taylor used the example of falling trees. A tree falling means that grass will come and grow where it was, which isn’t necessarily good or bad.
“It depends on whether you’re the tree or whether you’re the grass that wants to grow where the tree was,” Taylor said.
From alerting its student and faculty population of storms to dealing with their aftermath, Berry College has numerous ways of handling and processing storms.