Makah CASE
Final Visit to Neah Bay
April 30, 2025
Blog post written by Julia Grossman
Our Spring Site Visit was our final visit to Neah Bay this school year! While it was sad to say goodbye until the Fall, we had a wonderful trip back to this lovely community that we’ve really gotten to know throughout the year.
The main purpose of the site visit was to conclude the internship program that Amnesty, Kali, Nani and Qwaapeys have worked so hard on all year. The 4 of them did an awesome job as our student interns!!
Throughout the year:
- Amnesty conducted interviews with elders and wrote a blog post synthesizing the purpose of the internship project.
- Nani drew an incredible team logo — which we had digitalized and printed as stickers! We brought 250 stickers to the school and everyone loved them!
- Qwaapeys came up with the team name Red Huckleberry (Hisi·Ɂa·d) and worked with Hazel to learn the Makah translation.
- All of our interns worked hard on their final poster that they made to communicate geohazards in Neah Bay!
On this spring site visit, we had a few key goals:
1. Install a Raspberry Shake seismometer with our interns!
Raspberry Shake seismometers are designed to be educational tools and also contribute to a high-quality seismic network. We brought a Raspberry Shake seismometer with us and the interns helped us install it in Holly’s classroom! Now, Neah Bay High School has its very own seismometer that is actively recording data. This real-time data is open and accessible to anyone with Raspberry Shake’s Shake Net app. It is also available on the Raspberry Shake website. This means that if students, teachers, and community members feel shaking, they can check the app to see if their school seismometer recorded an earthquake!
Photo by Julia Grossman.
Raspberry Shake website.
2. Put up tsunami walk time maps around town with our interns!
We went around Neah Bay and put up tsunami walk time maps. These big maps show how long it would take a person to walk out of the tsunami inundation zone and the best routes they should take. (Students analyzed these maps during spring break!) Amnesty, Kali, Nani, and Qwaapeys identified key locations in town that are busiest, and where these maps could help the greatest number of people. We hung them up at the Makah Community Gym and the Makah Tribal Senior Center.
3. Put up our intern’s final poster in NBHS to communicate knowledge of local geohazards
Finally, to wrap up the internship, we hung up the poster our interns made in the common area at the high school. We also hung up an additional tsunami walk time poster so all the students in the school can better understand the hazard and how to be prepared.
Photo by Julia Grossman.
Photo by Julia Grossman.
4. Teach a lesson on science communication!
We couldn’t go to Neah Bay and not teach a lesson for Holly’s classes! Dovetailing with the internship, we focused our lesson on community resilience and science communication. We reviewed what we had learned over spring break, which was mostly about the hazards that Neah Bay faces. This visit’s lesson focused on ways to reduce risk due to these hazards. The strategy we focused most on was science communication. After our short lesson, we asked our students to be creative and communicate something they learned about geohazards to their community. They created art, writing, brochures, comic strips, and collages all about geohazards and community resilience!
Photo by Abby Heinicke.
Photo by Julia Grossman.
Photo by Julia Grossman.
Photo by Julia Grossman.
Photo by Julia Grossman.
5. Say goodbye for this year.
While the CCASE program will continue next year, each year is unique because of all the lovely personalities of the Neah Bay students and the UW team members. During this visit, some of our team members said goodbye to the Neah Bay community (at least for the foreseeable future). We all feel so welcomed and at home there, which made our final visit for the year very sentimental and bittersweet. We’re so grateful for the incredible year we had working with everyone at Neah Bay, and will take all of the memories and lessons with us moving forward! Until next time!
Photo by Julia Grossman.
Photo by Abby Heinicke.
