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Virtual program to help schools: System will assist emergency personnel
Feb 03, 2010 (The Decatur Daily - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Alabama emergency personnel soon will be able to look at their schools and see all fire extinguishers, electrical boxes and high-traffic areas without stepping on campus.
"Virtual Alabama" will allow access via the schools' video surveillance systems where available. School officials hailed the project a major advance in school safety.
"This really takes our school safety to the next level," said Phil Hastings, Decatur City Schools' director of safety and alternative education.
Auburn University-Montgomery's Center for Government is computer-mapping one school in each of the state's 133 school systems with Google Earth.
The project is a partnership between the state Department of Homeland Security, the state Department of Education, the Alabama Criminal Justice Application Center and the Super Computer Authority.
$25,000 grant
Hastings said his school system is getting a $25,000 grant to buy video surveillance cameras for Austin and Decatur high schools.
Auburn-Montgomery's Moody Duff mapped Austin High School in Decatur and Falkville High School in Morgan County. Athens, Hartselle and East Lawrence high schools and Creekside Elementary School in Limestone County will be pilot schools.
Duff is using the pilot schools as examples for the other school administrators and computer technicians to follow in mapping their schools.
Auburn-Montgomery consultant Jeff Blancett said the idea came from Gov. Bob Riley after he saw a Google Earth map of the Gulf Coast in the Hurricane Katrina aftermath.
Using map sketch, Duff went through Austin and located 37 items. In addition to the items mentioned earlier, he looked for other things such as hazardous materials, roof entrances, evacuation routes and areas where students might take shelter during a tornado warning.
He loaded the items into a Google Earth program. He also mapped areas surrounding the school such as a media staging area, traffic flow and points where police can control traffic access to the school. For example, the map shows Austin's media staging area would be at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church.
"It really helps any time a responder can get a better picture of what's happening in an emergency before he actually gets into the situation," said Eddie Hicks, Morgan County Emergency Management director.
Management plan
Austin Principal Don Snow said he believes the virtual map will be a great asset for the emergency responders because it puts everything that's already in his crisis management plan on computer.
"As time goes by, we'll figure out how it can be more useful to us (the Austin staff)," Snow said. "It will definitely help us with our drills and management of the schools. It also made us make definitive decisions on things like the staging areas."
To see more of The Decatur Daily, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.decaturdaily.com Copyright (c) 2010, The Decatur Daily, Ala.
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