Storm Resilient Structures with Dan Zehner of NHERI

After the tornados were so devastating to structures in Alabama in early March, the hosts of the Disaster Podcast decided to reach out to Dan Zehner at the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI). Dan is the host of the DesignSafe Radio podcast. Dan shares some of the resources and techniques to examine and test structural components in the face of extreme weather events. Various facilities associated with NHERI around the U.S. take part in the structural testing used to improve building practices and codes to create resilient communities.

Tornados ripped through parts of the southeastern United States last week. We decided to dedicate an episode last week with our disaster weather expert, Kyle Nelson to talk about the extreme weather event. Kyle discussed the classification of tornados, how the National Weather Service comes in after an event like this and evaluates damage to assign an Enhanced Fujita Scale rating to the individual twisters.

The string of tornados was particularly devastating to parts of Alabama. One area in Lee County was struck by storms where 23 people lost their lives in an EF 4 tornado that was reported to be a half mile wide at one point.

On the show this week are co-hosts Sam Bradley and Jamie Davis.

Join the Discussion

Join the discussion after the show with co-hosts Sam Bradley and Jamie Davis, the Podmedic in our Disaster Podcast Facebook Group now!

Paragon Brings “The Experience”

Paragon Medical Education Group specializes in bringing what they call “The Experience” to jurisdictions around the country. They bring together police, fire, EMS, and hospital teams to train together and learn what to expect from each diverse group in the response team so that each knows what to expect from the other and how to back the other groups up. Visit Paragon’s site at ParagonMedicalGroup.com for more information on how this can be brought into your system.