Montgomery County, PA

 

NORRISTOWN — The storm that blanketed the region in six or more inches of snow Monday can hardly be classified as severe, but it does highlight the influence that weather sometimes has on the day-to-day lives of our residents.

 

The Montgomery County Commissioners hope that it will also draw attention to the fact that Weather Emergency Preparedness Week runs through March 7th in Pennsylvania and encourage residents to take advantage of the resources available to them.

 

The observance will include a statewide severe weather exercise and a series of public education programs. One of the newest local outreach efforts is a Web site, www.ReadyNotifyPa.org, where residents can sign up for an emergency text messaging service that will keep them informed during a crisis in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

 

“Information is the most crucial commodity in any emergency,” Montgomery County Commissioners Chairman James R. Matthews said. “ReadyNotify allows us to provide that information quickly and efficiently.”

 

ReadyNotifyPA is a system that allows local officials to send E-mail or text messages to cell phones, BlackBerries, pagers or other E-mail enabled devices during an emergency. It is a service of Ready Region, a public education program with its own Web site, www.ReadyRegion.org, that helps people be prepared for any kind of emergency. The site encourages citizens to “Be Informed, Be Prepared, Be Involved,” and includes information on potential disasters, checklists for home and car emergency kits, and family emergency plan templates.

The statewide weather emergency exercise will occur on Thursday, March 5th and include officials from across Pennsylvania as well as many schools, hospitals, nursing homes and day care centers. The exercise is designed to test severe weather emergency response plans that have been developed by municipalities and public or private facilities.

 

There will also be a statewide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) at 10:10 a.m. on Friday, March 6th.  EAS is a voluntary network of local radio and television stations and is the primary public alert and notification system for emergency information.

 

The exercise includes exercise-based severe weather reports to be issued by the National Weather Service over normal reporting channels, such as the NWS Weather Radio stations.