CRESTVIEW — Chayne Sparagowski is the Gulf Coast's new emergency management coordinator, working with the National Weather Service's National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program.
It's a significant responsibility for the 2008 Crestview High School graduate, but if his childhood dream came true, it may never have happened.
"All the way through elementary school and middle school, my career goal was to be a school bus driver," the Chayne said. "But I always had kind of an interest in meteorology."
"We're so proud of him," his mom said. "I told him, 'You waited your whole life for this. Well, except for the first 12 years when you wanted to be a school bus driver.'"
As NWS Gulf Coast representative, Chayne said, "I am going to be working with a science representative who also represents the Gulf Coast. He's out of Texas A&M University in Galveston.
"Basically, what I am doing is working with the science lead in developing products for the emergency management field for tsunami mitigation and education.
Here, he discusses more about his new position.
Is this a new program?
It's relatively new, especially for the Gulf Coast states. It was primarily a program on the West Coast, where the greatest threat is. In the Gulf Coast, it's been around but it hasn't been very active, so there's been a bigger push to get it active again.
What are some of your responsibilities?
Provide tools to emergency management for tsunami risks and mitigation practices, and also provide an emergency management oversight, letting the science representative who's working on the actual development of the tools know what we need in the emergency management field.
Every other month they have conference calls with the entire program, which is a total of 28 states and territories. I represent the five Gulf Coast states.
There's also a national meeting in July in San Diego that I'll be attending.
So now, the really important question: Is there a tsunami threat in our area?
There is a risk in the Gulf of Mexico. There are three shelves in the Gulf that, if they were to collapse, they would cause a tsunami. There's one off the coast of Florida, one off the coast of Louisiana and one off the coast of Texas.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Is there a tsunami threat? Crestview High grad has the answer