The Illinois Emergency Management Agency and the Central U.S. Earthquake Consortium partnered up to create a new way to educate the public about earthquakes and how to prepare for them.
They created a earthquake information kiosk that's on display at Carbondale's University Mall.
When you're walking through the mall, you're used to seeing a kiosk or two, but none of them are like this one in front of the Science Center inside the University Mall in Carbondale.
This earthquake education kiosk is interactive, and it’s designed to inform people how to prepare their homes and minimize damage caused by earthquakes.
“You come up to the screen and start pushing on things and touching the screen and great things happen, information just comes at you.”
SIU Geologist Harvey Henson says this earthquake education kiosk is the first of its kind in the Midwest.
“Scott Hodgson of the university of Oklahoma and I he’s the creative side of this, we part our two energies together and we create outreach material to help students, parents, the community become aware of the earthquake threat and then prepare for the earthquake threat,”
The kiosk contains numerous how to videos demonstrating how to secure things in your home, what to do during and after an earthquake.
There’s also a virtual home with New Spin 360 software to navigate around and view room by room how to prepare for an earthquake.
It also offers a history lesson on how earthquakes happen and there locations across the country.
CUSEC coordinator Brian Blake says people in this area need to be educated and better prepared for earthquakes.
“Illinois and the central United States is at risk to earthquakes, particularly from New Madrid and Wabash valley seismic zone that could happen at anytime.”
Now that the kiosk is in operation Blake says the next step will be to secure funding to make more kiosk.
“With the expectation that now that we have a interface we can actually go out and install more and it wouldn’t be such a high price to do so.”
The kiosk took 4 years to go from concept to reality and cost about $40,000 to build.
It was funded through a grant from FEMA.
