FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Feb. 2, 2011

MUW to hold final public DRU hearing

COLUMBUS, Miss. -- Mississippi University for Women will soon close the final chapter of the Disaster Resistant University (DRU) process when it holds the final public hearing on Tuesday, Feb. 15, from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in the Hogarth Student Center.  The meeting will be come-and-go and all interested individuals will be asked to sign in.

Last November MUW's DRU plan received approval from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), pending local adoption and documentation of a final public hearing. The approval qualifies the university for pre-disaster financial assistance to help initiate mitigation actions. The plan identifies potential hazards (natural and man-made), critical assets and resources that will minimize vulnerabilities while estimating monetary losses that could incur due to these hazards.

The DRU planning team was composed of a cross-section of university staff, city government representatives, community organizations, Columbus Air Force Base personnel, Institutions of Higher Learning and Mississippi Emergency Management Agency officials.  The project, which began in Dec. 2008, was done in four phases: Phase 1 was to organize resources; Phase 2 consisted of hazard identification and risk assessment; Phase 3 was developing the mitigation plan while Phase 4 included adoption and implementation.

"The planning team's work was so effective that the plan was approved without any revisions, which speaks volumes," said Angela Jones, project coordinator and MUW assistant to the vice president for finance and administration."

Once FEMA receives the documentation from the final public hearing, they will send MUW a final approval letter that will complete the approval process.

The plan can be viewed at MUW's Fant Memorial Library and is also on the university's DRU website at http://web2.muw.edu/index.php/en/main-vpfa.