Forest Grove Middle School’s 7th Grade students welcomed guest speakers for a FEMA presentation. It was a great experience for our students to observe how their environments respond to natural weather events.
This is a summary of the presentation:
The storm water model was in front of the students.
Students were told about FEMA’s roll in mitigation of natural disasters.
What is missing from our model? Students: stores, schools, roads, etc.
Infrastructure defined.
Students were asked to volunteer as homeowners. 6 students then placed their MONOPOLY houses “anywhere in the green” part of the model.
The rest of the students were on the “city council” for the new city.
Students were asked about wetlands and their roll in absorbing water. The sponges are acting as the wetlands in the model.
Water was poured into the piece of the model that turned the water into “rain”. This led to a normal water flow in the river system. The rain over the city sometimes caused a house to go downstream.
Next, a parking lot was placed on top of the wetland – infrastructure needs to go somewhere. The “rain” now happened over the parking lot and over the city. Houses were swept away on the flood. Some houses were on higher ground and remained.
Next, students were asked about retention ponds, and a retention pond was added in place of the parking lot. The rain was repeated. Water flow was reduced. The houses stayed in place most of the time.
Possible mitigation strategies were discussed. Homeowners were offered replacement houses that were elevated. When the rain came again, the elevated houses remained.
FEMA provides up to $43,500 per house for damage from natural disasters. They also talked about flood insurance and potential jobs working for FEMA.
