Proposed Multimillion-Dollar Interactive Center In Deerfield, Florida To Portray Hurricane Effects

The Hurricane Warning! interactive learning center proposed for Deerfield Beach will launch a massive capital campaign next month to fund its very creation.

"We'll need to raise between $25 and $35 million," said Deerfield Beach Fire Division Chief Jim Mathie, chairman of the center's board.

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Shaped like the weather bureau symbol for a hurricane, the proposed 50,000-square-foot center would be at Interstate 95 and Southwest 10th Street on the 17-acre campus of the Safety and Health Learning Center of South Florida, a partnership of the Broward Sheriff's Office, Florida Atlantic University, the Florida Atlantic Research and Development Authority, Deerfield Beach and the National Safety Council.

"Hurricane Warning! will show everything from beginning to end -- literally," said Mathie. "It will show how a storm forms and its aftermath."

Visitors to the completed center will be able to see the eye of a storm through an interactive experience similar to a theme-park attraction. A multi-screen presentation will examine the historical relationship between humans and hurricanes and other natural disasters. There also will be a weather center that gives ongoing weather updates with Doppler radar and satellites; a large globe will display weather conditions anywhere in the world; a television and media center will allow visitors to make simulated broadcasts; an interactive emergency evacuation experience will test awareness; a special effects theater will simulate an actual hurricane and its aftermath while patrons are dressed in rain gear.

A $300,000 state grant is paying for a Web site (www.hurrricanewarning.org), development of a board of directors, architectural initiatives and an update of a feasibility study conducted in 1999.

The target audience is individuals, families and businesses as well as response agencies, emergency managers and mitigation specialists. The goal is for all to make preparations for any type of natural or man-made disaster.

Mathie said Secretary Tom Ridge and Undersecretary Michael Brown of the Department of Homeland Security are taking an interest in the project.

"If you're ready for a hurricane, you can be ready for an act of terror. The same elements of preparedness for natural disasters -- an emergency kit, a plan and awareness -- are the same needed to prepare for acts of terror," Mathie said.

Hurricane Warning! will be a local educational attraction with a wide geographic reach.

"It's not just to Deerfield Beach that this project is relevant but also to the region," said Ron Dearing Jr., chief executive officer of the National Safety Council's South Florida chapter and chairman-elect of the board of Hurricane Warning! "It will also have an international impact. We'll be sharing information with other countries. And it will have not only national but state and local support."

Mathie and Dearing expect Hurricane Warning! to be completed in about three years. Admission for adults will be about $10.50. Schools from Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties will be encouraged to sponsor student field trips to the center.

The inspiration for the center is New York City's Fire Zone. Opened in 2000, that project is devoted to public education about fire prevention and is host to about 100,000 visitors a year.

As is the Fire Zone, the Hurricane Warning! facility will be considered part of the national inventory of models to educate Americans about safety and health.

Other educational models include the Oklahoma City National Memorial Center and Museum, the National Earthquake Information Center, and the Galveston/Texas History Center Rosenberg Library. Hurricane Warning! will be the first major center of its kind on the southeast coast of the United States.

Operations for the nascent center are currently in a building donated by State Farm Insurance, the "Good Neighbor House," which was built to demonstrate ways to minimize hurricane damage and ensure the safety of occupants. More than 100 safety construction features and design techniques are displayed.

The Good Neighbor House, which opened in 1999, will be one of the permanent components of the Safety and Health Learning Center. In addition to the house and the hurricane project will be the offices for the National Safety Council, which will take the lead for the entire state; an educational center with a 350-seat auditorium; Florida Atlantic University Research and Development Park; and the Deerfield Beach Fire Station.

The 40,000-square-foot fire station, to be completed in 2005 or shortly after, will be the nation's first mitigation operation center. Able to withstand a Category 4 hurricane, it will house a stand-alone regional Broward Sheriff's Office communications dispatch center serving the entire county.