By Peter Denk, Transcript Washington Bureau

Oklahoma public safety agencies will have a new tool to help them deal with the natural disasters Mother Nature sends their way, thanks to a $550,000 federal grant awarded Thursday to the University of Oklahoma.

The money was given by the Department of Commerce to the university's Climatological Survey. The funds will enable the university to give 32 civil emergency agencies, police and fire departments access to a database that draws upon the resources of the National Weather Service.

The project – called OK-FIRST, Oklahoma's First-response Information Resource System using Telecommunications – is intended to be a bridge between the weather service and local communities, according to Ken Crawford, professor of meteorology at OU, who traveled to Washington on Thursday to accept the award.

"Take the example of the fire department responding to a range fire," Crawford said. "Our data can let them know what kind of weather they might encounter on the scene of the fire for the next few hours."

Program participants will be able to access full color weather models divided into sub-counties that are updated every six minutes, Crawford said.

"There are a lot of local agencies that don't have the resources to access this information," said Dale Morris, assistant director of OK-FIRST, who also was in Washington.

Crawford said the program expects to identify the 32 participants by Christmas and begin providing training and information by February. OK-FIRST will provide computers and access software to the local agencies.

Participants will be able to access humidity, rainfall accumulation and fire danger rating models through the system. High-tech forecast models will show which storms contain hail and which don't, and will predict wind direction changes.

"A problem in many rural areas is the communication of what we know to those who are at risk," Crawford said.

"We're trying to give them something meteorological in nature but is still understandable. We're a conduit of information."

The Oklahoma project was among 67 nationwide that were given $18.6 million in grants through the Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program, designed to spur the spread of information technology. More than 800 projects applied for the federal help.

The total cost of OK-FIRST is $1.7 million. The university and the state departments of public safety and civil emergency management are poised to supplement the federal money.

The federal grant expires after two years, but Cerry Leffler, Crawford's assistant, said there is hope the state will pick up funding at that point. "Hopefully state agencies will jump on the bandwagon to join the information age," she said.

Used by permission, Norman Transcript

" A problem in many rural areas is the communications of what we know to those who are at risk. We're trying to give them something meteorological in nature but is still understandable. We're a conduit of information." understand what they're looking at."
Ken Crawford, director of OCS