Inspired by the recent eruptions of Mount St. Helens, two 11-year-old girls with eyes on the future have been thinking about the best way to warn residents.

The students, sixth-grade HomeConnection students Adrianna Royal and Tadia Franko, turned their thoughts into a project that made them ExploraVision Regional award winners.

Their project, called Volcano Early Warning System, outlines the technology that needs to be developed in the next 20 years to implement a system installed in cars.

“We thought our project would save more lives in the future,” Royal said before a recent Oak Harbor School Board meeting at which they presented their project.

The two students proposed a system that would fit on the dash of a car. It features a clear CD unit and a holographic GPS unit to help guide motorists in case of an eruption or lahar (which is a volcanic mudflow).

In preparing their project, they researched Mount St. Helens and decided a better warning system could be developed.

“We started studying volcanoes in September,” Royal said.

To participate in the world-wide competition, Royal and Franko wrote an 11-page paper on their warning system. Through their writing, they had also touch upon the positives and negatives of their proposed equipment.

Their paper earned a regional award in the ExploraVision contest. Royal and Franko are one of 24 teams in the United States and Canada to earn the award. In all, nearly 13,600 students, filling 4,405 teams, participated. The contest, sponsored by Toshiba and administered by the National Science Teachers Association, has students imagine future technologies that could exist in the next 20 years.

Bruce Engberg of Toshiba said he is always going to areas similar to Oak Harbor to present awards.

“I’m always going to the small communities. It’s the small communities that always get involved,” Enberg said.

With the paper finished, the Franko and Royal are preparing for the next phase of the competition where they have to develop a Web page. The two visionaries presented preliminary Web pages during the meeting.

Franko said her favorite part of the project was developing the games and links on the Web site. To help develop their Web site, Franko and Royal were given a laptop computer.

That computer goes to HomeConnection, a home-based education program administered by the school district, when the project is complete.

But they didn’t go away empty handed. Both students were also given a VCR/DVD.

The Web site needs to be finished by April 12. That’s when a national judging committee selects the eight finalists. The teams, along with two family members, coach, mentor and parents will head to an award ceremony this June in Washington D.C. First place winners will receive a $10,000 U.S. savings bond while second place winners will receive a $5,000 savings bond.