Visitors to the Natural History Museum of Utah can now experience what it is like to be in a tornado alongside the usual dinosaur fossils on display.
Nature Unleashed is a traveling exhibit produced by The Field Museum in Chicago. The focus of the exhibit is to teach people about natural disasters, why they happen and how to prepare for them. The exhibit runs through Dec. 8.
Sarah George, executive director of the museum, said she decided to bring the exhibit to Utah after she saw it in Portland in 2012.
“It’s perfect for us because we sit on an earthquake fault. We had a tornado go through downtown,” George said. “We don’t have to worry about volcanoes or hurricanes, but it’s good for us to understand them.”
Among the usual sections on earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes and wildfires the exhibit at the museum features an exhibit on Utah wildfires unique to the showing.
“It’s something we worry about here,” George said. “We talk about the habitat that we have in the West [and] how we’ve impacted the habitat to create an environment that is more susceptible to wildfires. There’s a section on what you can do if you’re building in wild lands — what you can do to prevent and minimize the damage to property.”
The wildfire exhibit also features photos and information on the 19 firefighters killed while fighting a wildfire in Prescott, Ariz. in July.
Other features in Nature Unleashed include oral histories of Hurricane Katrina survivors, tools used to study and monitor natural disasters and a circle of seven screens showing what it is like to be in a tornado.
“This is really an immersive [sic] experience with sound. There’s things to do. There’s movies to see,” George said.
Gallery programs coordinator Paul Michael Maxfield said interactivity is one of the exhibit’s goals.
“We wanted to give people an opportunity to have kind of a hands-on experience,” he said.
Gallery interpreters who host interactive events in the exhibit help provide this type of hands-on involvment. One interpreter allows people to place the elements of a “lake front property” in a tub of dirt which is then shaken by a concrete vibrator to simulate an earthquake. The lakefront property not only falls over, but is flooded by water from under the surface.
“We wanted to make the earthquake component of this exhibit more local,” Maxfield said. “There are many, many places in the Salt Lake Valley that this will occur. Downtown will probably get the worst of it — anywhere around the Jordan River. When the earthquake hits, we’re going to see a lot of flooding.”
Another feature is Scientist in the Spotlight. Local scientists sit at the exhibit to answer questions, talk about their research and show photos and labratory tools. John Lawson, a graduate student in atmospheric science who is currently studying a Davis County wind storm from 2011, was the spotlighted scientist in early July.
“It’s nice to actually talk to people and speak in a language that people understand,” Lawson said.
Sometimes, people think that huge disasters, such as the Yellowstone wildfire or the tornado that hit Moore, Okla. earlier this summer are the only disasters, but Utah has its own share of natural disasters, too.
“Utah’s got its very own natural disasters — wind storms, a Utah natural disaster … It’s good to talk to people about that,” Lawson said.
Lawson especially likes to tell people that Utah has some of the most powerful windstorms in the world.
“That’s pretty cool,” he said.