UTRGV program prepares community for hurricane season

EDINBURG, Texas (ValleyCentral) — A community resiliency program at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley is preparing to educate and prepare people for hurricane season.

ARISE, a Valley non-profit organization, gathered in Edinburg on Wednesday for a presentation with the UTRGV hurricane resiliency ambassadors.

The presentation discussed how to prepare one's home, supplies to gather and how to keep everyone in a household safe.

"Geographically we are prone to hurricane disaster. So we need to do preparation. And with that, then we can build resilience, disaster resilience communities," said Dean Kyne, Disaster Studies Program Coordinator at UTRGV.

William Donner, a resiliency ambassador and Chair of the Department of Sociology at UTRGV shares the importance of these presentations.

"It's an effort to ensure that the community is safe, secure and has all the resources it needs to protect itself from from the inevitable hurricanes that we face each year here in the Rio Grande Valley," Donner said.

The UTRGV resiliency program plans to give presentations in other areas of the Valley including Donna and Brownsville throughout hurricane season.

"The community has a lot to learn from the university and vice versa. We have a lot to learn from the community," Donner said.