NWS Public Service Award Presented to Lew Fincher
Mr. Lew Fincher was presented the National Weather Service(NWS) Southern Region Public Service Award in December 1996. Mr. Fincher has a long history of assisting the NWS in hurricane preparedness activities for southeast Texas. As an extra duty with the company, Lew serves as hurricane preparedness coordinator at the Dupont Plant in Laporte, Texas. In addition to the usual role of seeing that his plant is prepared, Lew has established a network of representatives from other Dupont sites along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. This pool of resources helps Dupont be one of the better hurricane prepared companies. Lew goes beyond industrial preparedness in that he is always developing materials and putting on safety programs for employees to make them aware of preparedness activities for their families.

Mr. Fincher has taken his interest in hurricane preparedness to the community. He has organized a number of local "town meeting" type hurricane seminars in our area. Lew worked with us to arrange speakers and material for the presentations. Also, he has worked with a number of community weekly newspapers to see that hurricane preparedness articles are included and that the information is correct. Lew has assisted us in the preparation of the lead-in video for the annual Hurricane Workshop each of the last three years.

Other activities in which Lew has helped include research on the impact of the 1943 hurricane and other storms that have hit this area, prepared a video on storm spotter training in this area, and provided printing by Dupont of our Storm Signals Newsletter.

These actions truly represent the highest quality of volunteer service. In addition Lew is always a pleasure to work with and provides this office tremendous insight on the threat to petrochemical industry by hurricanes in this area. The Public Service Award is the highest award that can be presented to a non-NWS employee by the Southern Region of the NWS.