Pinellas Tornado Drill Looks To Prep Residents, Businesses, Organizations

LARGO, FL – Residents across Pinellas County will be ducking for cover from tornadoes next Wednesday. However, this is only a test.

Pinellas County is partnering with the State Emergency Response Team and other Central Florida counties to participate in the regional Great Tornado Drill on Wednesday, Jan. 25. The event is part of Severe Weather Awareness Week, and Pinellas County is encouraging its residents to take part whether they’re at work, play in the classroom or at home.

The exercise is meant to encourage business leaders, faith-based organizations, nonprofits, government agencies and individuals to identify how tornado alerts will be received at work or home, where safe rooms could be used as shelters during tornadoes and how to more staff, customers or family into those areas in the safest way possible.

Businesses, organizations, families and individuals interested in participating are asked to first identify a shelter and their source of emergency alerts, such as messages received on a mobile phone, weather radio or other notification service. The alerts should be loud enough to wake a person if a tornado in the middle of the night.

Because of the great speed tornadoes travel, an alert will give participants about 11 minutes to find shelter.

At 10 a.m. on the day of the event, participants should act as if a weather emergency notification was issued and practice sheltering everyone in their safe room quickly. The county warns participants that the National Weather Service issues a weekly test at 10:10 a.m. on Wednesdays and is not part of the tornado drill.

People in Pinellas County participating in the drill will have a chance to win prizes by participating in social media during The Great Tornado Drill. To enter, participants can use the hashtag #PCtornadodrill and post it to Pinellas County’s Facebook page, the county’s Twitter feed or its Instagram account.

The best photo entries will win a NOAA Weather Radio. The radios broadcasts continuous emergency weather information from offices around the country. When a warning is issued, these radios emit a loud tone that will awaken those nearby to take protective cover.

For more information on emergency preparedness, visit http://www.pinellascounty.org/emergency.

Image via Shutterstock