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Ideas
FEMA for Kids: Serious & Fun

By Carolyn Hughes Crowley
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, May 28, 2001; Page C04

Hurricane season is around the corner (it officially begins June 1), but now parents can lessen their children's anxieties and teachers can give safety lessons by visiting the award-winning FEMA for Kids Web site.

FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which helps communities nationwide prepare for, respond to and recover from significant natural disasters and emergencies. FEMA for Kids is intended for third- to sixth-graders -- but older students, adults and teachers can enjoy it and learn from it as well, while younger children can find sections that will entertain and educate them.

The Web site, which is four years old, tackles serious subjects in fun ways. Kids get the latest in disaster news. With large type, bold colors and lots of graphics, the site has sounds, safety rules, games, quizzes, a coloring book and jokes to teach children about disasters. Popular with all ages, this site gets up to a million hits a month.

FEMA for Kids is "not about why earthquakes occur or hurricanes form. I send kids [who want that information] elsewhere, says Holly Harrington, the site's founder and manager. "Our concern," she says, "is what to do to protect yourself during a disaster. Kids have a good time and don't notice they're learning."

Parents are under stress with lots on their minds during disasters, "so often they leave their kids alone to cope. I wanted tools online showing what to expect and to make kids feel better," Harrington says. She created FEMA for Kids for another reason as well: "Children are conduits of information to their parents. We've seen it with smoking and seat belts. Children relay back to their parents information on disaster-risk reduction and disaster-resistant principles."

Fear of Dying

Frightened children also write to FEMA for Kids for comfort. While Hurricane Floyd stalled off the East Coast in 1999 before wreaking its heavy damage, one young girl e-mailed her fear of imminent death. "Her parents weren't talking to her about the hurricane because they thought it would make her more fearful. I wrote her back, told her what was happening and to talk to her parents about her concerns. I referred her to the hurricane section of FEMA for Kids. Next I suggested to then-Director James Lee Witt that he ask parents to talk to their kids about hurricanes and he did," says Harrington.

After the Seattle earthquake this February, a child became afraid to sleep in his second-floor bedroom. "He asked if he should hide under his bed or run into his mom's bedroom. I encouraged him to talk to his mom and directed him to our earthquake site and told him to conduct a home-hazard hunt, looking for cabinets not secured to the wall and plants and pictures hanging over beds. By finding these hazards and reporting them to Mom, he'd make his house safer," Harrington recalls.

Get Ready, Get Set

FEMA for Kids has two main sections. Get Ready, Get Set tells children their three-day Disaster Supply Kits should include nonperishable food and water -- at least four quarts per person per day for cooking and hygiene and extra water for pets. Evacuees should grab their prepared-ahead-of-time first-aid kits and have in their duffel bags or backpacks: a battery-operated radio, fire extinguisher (ABC type), matches in a waterproof container, a wrench to turn off the gas and water, and a flashlight with extra batteries. The one tool everyone must have: a manual can opener.

This section urges homeowners to use storm shutters for window and glass protection. Earthquake safety necessitates securing houses to foundations with anchor bolts (cost is $2 each and they should be installed every six feet on a house's outer edges). Tile or flame-retardant shingles on roofs -- not wood shakes or standard shingles -- will lessen or prevent damage from wildfires.

Get Ready, Get Set instructs kids to take their pets with them if the family must evacuate. But if they can't, then "make sure your pet can get into a safe, secure room without windows, but with adequate air. Leave enough food for three days. Leave a faucet dripping into the bathtub or sink (with the drain open!). Put a notice on your front door saying where your pets are in the house and a phone number where you will be. Never, never, never leave your dog tied up outside!"

What's Happening Now

In the second main section, What's Happening Now, children click on states to find out what natural disasters are possible there. By month and day they can check Today in Disaster History. Ten hurricanes occurred one September, the peak month of the hurricane season, which runs through Nov. 30.

A section for adults has links to other Web sites and a bibliography. Another offers resources for parents and teachers that includes information on mitigating hazards, developing a response plan and making schools disaster-resistant. This section also tells how to identify at-risk children and how to conduct classroom exercises that help students voice their fears and overcome them. Teachers incorporate the disaster and safety messages into their regular subjects.

Kids Tell Their Stories

Disaster Connection: Kids to Kids is where people who have been through disasters can tell their stories with poems, artwork and essays. The lessons they give from their experiences "adhere to what we are already recommending," Harrington says. "What I post meets our already-existing guidelines." Sabrina wrote last year, "I was hit by lightning while taking a hike in the Grand Canyon. Believe me, being hit by lightning is not fun! I want you to know how to protect yourself from lightning, so here are some basic lightning tips that can help you to be safer."

She gives tips for indoor and outdoor safety, what to watch for, what are safe and unsafe shelters and what to do if a child is on a sports team and a thunderstorm occurs. "Should you tell your coach or the person in charge that the team should get off the field? If the coach says it is just a little rain and not to worry about it, should you leave anyway and take shelter? This is a serious question," Sabrina says. "You could get kicked off the team if you leave, but your life is more important than the game. In 1999, a whole soccer team was killed by lightning in Africa and a whole football team was injured by lightning in Colorado."

Besides playing on the computer, many kids like to read, so for them Harrington wrote two books about disasters. (At the Catharine R. Watkins Elementary School on Capitol Hill one recent afternoon, 23 attentive fourth-graders, each sitting at a laptop computer, clapped when Harrington said she had brought her two books to give to them. The publications' stories also appear in vivid color on the Web site.)
On the preceeding stories link, I colored the Disaster Twins story and the Herman story that I illustrated

Herman the Crab

Harrington aimed "Herman, P.I.C. [Project Impact Crab] and the Hunt for a Disaster-Proof Shell" at K-2 pupils. Herman is the mascot and spokescrab for the FEMA for Kids Web site. He learns a new safety lesson each time a disaster destroys his shell. After applying hurricane straps to a new shell because a strong wind had blown off his first one, an unprepared Herman suffered flood damage when water seeped into his shell and covered it in mud. So, wary of possible future troubles, he took steps to save his next shells from hurricanes, tornadoes and floods, but during an earthquake, branches landed on him, cracking his outer protection. "Suddenly I could see outside!" Onward he went to look for yet another safe sanctuary.

At a barbecue with friends, his new "safehold" caught fire. "I didn't have a fire extinguisher and I had not taken precautions to cut back dry brush around my neighborhood. I had to run out of my shell and leave it behind! It was a total loss."

Woe to the crab that doesn't think ahead and prepare. He tells his readers that because of all he has learned from FEMA's Project Impact -- which teaches home safety before disasters happen -- he knew he had to speak out about the importance of being disaster-proof.
I pushed for the use of a mascot on the FEMA For Kids page, and after suggestions of armadillos, turtles and worms, Holly agreed to feature Herman the Hermit Crab. After she wrote the story, I illustrated and colored the book.

The Disaster Twins

In the five illustrated chapters of Harrington's "The Adventures of Julia and Robbie," geared to third- and fourth-graders, mishaps follow these disaster twins. They live in Eenietown and attend Booksin School. They learn the correct actions to take to protect themselves during a snowstorm, a flash flood, an afternoon tornado, an earth-shaking vacation and a hurricane that veered away, but they were prepared for it, nevertheless.

Children react positively to what they read and hear on FEMA for Kids: John Arias, 9, in Betty Moore's fourth-grade class at Watkins Elementary, says, "The colors are excellent because they're a variety you don't see every day. The figures are weird," he adds, referring specifically to the big-headed guy who is the symbol of the site's quizzes, "but funny and catch your attention a lot. This site is complete. It has everything."

Says Holly Harrington: "I love my Web site and getting e-mails from kids. I'm a government worker who has children enjoying her Web site and books so much they write to her. My site is important in FEMA's mission to educate the public."

For free copies of "The Adventures of Julia and Robbie: The Disaster Twins" and "Herman, P.I.C. and the Hunt for a Disaster-Proof Shell," call 800-480-2520.