Maybe we will have this stuff by next year....
Storm rules mired in turmoil
By JASON SCHULTZ
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 12, 2007
A state law passed last year to prepare Florida better for hurricanes is causing its own storm of confusion instead.
When then-Gov. Jeb Bush signed the sweeping disaster readiness law in 2006, he said it would help Florida by the start of this year's hurricane season on June 1. But parts of the law have still not been implemented more than two months past the law's deadline, and now in the most active part of the hurricane season.
Chris Matula/The Post
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Neil Cohen, who owns a Chevron station in Delray Beach, spent $30,000 on his generator. The law should allow stations with generators to be the first to get gas from fuel tankers after a hurricane, he says. 'They could have come up with a better solution,' he says of the legislature. CHRIS MATULA Staff Photographer
Parts of the law now in effect
Several requirements of the Disaster Preparedness Response and Recovery Act of 2006 have been met, but officials worry about areas of confusion:
Prescription refills
The law says: After a state of emergency is declared, insurance companies must waive refill restrictions, allowing patients to get up to 30 days of medication regardless of when theyfilled the prescription most recently.
Status:The law doesn't require pharmacies tokeep enough stock to fill 30-day supplies, state officials say. But Walgreen's, for example, says it's aware of the law and could meet the demand.
Generator database
The law says: The state must complete a inventory and maintain a database of large portable generators owned by state and local government agencies.
Status: State Department of Emergency Management officials said they completed this database in December.
Emergency health equipment
The law says: All medical equipment suppliers and home health-care agencies mustsubmit plans to local health departments on how they will continue to supply oxygen tanks and other care to their patients during and after a storm.
Status: Local health department and emergency officials said they have been receiving stacks of emergency plans for weeks. But the law does not require the agencies to actually review the plans before a storm to see if they are sufficient. Many officials said they do not have the manpower to review the paperwork.
Service animals in shelters
The law says:People with special needs must be allowed to taketheir service animals to a special needs shelter.
Status: Health officials said they will be able to comply.
Gas stations and special-needs shelters that were supposed to have generators still don't have them. And many owners of residential buildings at least 75 feet high don't even know they are supposed to have a generator in place to power at least one elevator by the end of this year.
Local government officials and businesses blame the confusion on state lawmakers for passing a poorly written law.
"These were all good initiatives," said Tom Christopher, St. Lucie County emergency management director. "But some of them weren't quite thought-out enough."
Legislators blame the state agencies charged with implementing the law.
"At the end of the day, they didn't follow up," said state Rep. Sandra Adams, R-Orlando, the bill's primary sponsor. "I'm unhappy that it has taken my having to keep on them like a small child."
Chief among the problems:
Z Only two of 70 special-needs shelters statewide that need the heavy-duty generators to run air conditioning in an emergency have received them or even had wiring installed by the June 1 deadline. St. Lucie County was promised one of the generators in February but now may not get one. Martin County still hopes to receive one in December. Palm Beach and Okeechobee counties already had generators they needed at their primary special needs shelters.
Z Gas stations near hurricane evacuation routes that are supposed to have backup generators still lag behind. One state agency changed its interpretation of the law several times and then handed off responsibility for enforcement to a second agency as hurricane season began.
Z Confusion plagues the effort to force owners of tall residential buildings to install generators to power at least one elevator. Local officials say the state has provided too little information about the requirement. Nor does the law make it clear which agency is responsible for making sure building owners meet the law or penalizing them when they don't.
Not enough money allotted
The law set aside $53 million to buy and install generators large enough to power buildings designated as special needs shelters.
That money was supposed to pay for 70 shelters that counties identified as needing generators, but it was not enough. The Department of Emergency Management is planning only now to install generators in 48 of those shelters, according to an e-mail from agency spokesman Mike Stone.
Agency Director Craig Fugate said the cost of buying and installing generators far exceeded the money allocated.
"It was more complex and it took longer," he said. "It's not just the air conditioning. You pretty much having to go in and wire the whole campus."
According to an e-mail from the department Friday, 10 shelters are expected to be finished by October, and 25 to 30 shelters by the end of the year.
Among the latter is the shelter that Martin County plans at David L. Anderson Middle School. Others, such as Dan McCarty Middle School in St. Lucie County, will get a generator later if enough money is available.
The law says the buildings "should" be equipped by June 1, 2007, Stone said, not that they had to have been done by then.
But state Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, who co-sponsored the bill, said the Department of Emergency Management's interpretation was not the law's intent.
"I think the legislature saw it as more than a guideline," she said. "I want us to be ready for the next storm, and I will be very upset if we are not ready."
Martin County has been waiting for months to move its special-needs shelter from Challenger School to David L. Anderson Middle School, a new school that would hold 200 more evacuees.
Fugate's department promised Martin in February that it would receive a generator in time to comply with the law. By August, the generator had not arrived, and state officials now say it won't be installed until December.
Until the 1.2 megawatt generator comes and improvements can be made to have it installed, emergency officials will continue relying on the older school.
"We need the air conditioning, and we need the outlets to run the (oxygen) machines," Martin County Emergency Operations Director Keith Holman said. "We've been going back and forth on this."
State officials also told St. Lucie County in February that it would get a 900-kilowatt generator for Dan McCarty Middle School in Fort Pierce, the county's special-needs shelter.
But St. Lucie County Emergency Management Director Tom Christopher said the state told him in May that it no longer could afford to buy a generator for his shelter.
"I was surprised by that one because I was assured it was a done deal," Christopher said.
Gas station owners baffled
Meanwhile, about half of the gas stations required to have emergency generators installed by June 1 had them or had the wiring needed to run them as of Aug. 1.
That's partly because it has taken two state agencies more than a year to sort out the enforcement, which has caused several changes in which stations are required to comply.
Initially, the state Department of Environmental Protection said only 254 of the 9,600 stations in the state had to be wired for generators, based on the criteria of having enough pumps and being within a half-mile of an evacuation route. And of those, no stations between Key West and Port St. Lucie were required to be wired.
Then, just weeks before the June 1 deadline, department officials discovered a mistake in their calculations and changed the number of stations affected statewide to about 1,500. That number dropped when department inspectors visited the stations and found many did not have enough pumps to qualify.
And it fell again — to under 1,000 — after the Department of Agriculture took over enforcement after June 1 and found that some stations on the list no longer were open and many others were too far from main evacuation routes.
Stations not wired for generators by June 1 were supposed to be prosecuted for a misdemeanor violation. But the Agriculture Department is giving owners a grace period because of the confusion about who was affected, said agency spokesman Terence McElroy.
"There was real confusion right on the eve of June 1," said McElroy, who added that inspectors have found some station owners who spent money on wiring, only to learn later that they are not required to comply.
Jim Smith, president of the Florida Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association, said he knew of similar cases of confused stations mistakenly investing thousands of dollars into getting wired.
That's what almost happened to Jay Goldwasser, who owns a Shell station in Palm Beach Gardens. He was on the list in May but was dropped before June 1.
But he said nobody told him he no longer needed to comply, and he was getting ready to hire an electrician until a reporter delivered the news.
"I got a price" of as much as $20,000 last week, said Goldwasser, who called the requirement ludicrous.
"Even if you have a transfer switch, good luck getting gas," he said.
Delray Beach Chevron station owner Neil Cohen has to comply. He has spent $30,000 on a generator, but he blasted the law, saying the state should guarantee that stations with generators get first priority when fuel tankers arrive after a hurricane.
"If the legislature had half a brain, they could have come up with a better solution," Cohen said. "Instead, they jammed something down our throats that doesn't make any sense."
Building owners didn't know
Legislators also meant the law to help residents of tall buildings who, after the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005, had to climb up and down steps when power was knocked out, rendering their elevators useless.
The law required buildings taller than 75 feet — or roughly seven stories — to have generators by the end of this year that could provide power to at least one elevator.
Steve Inglis, president of the Bristol Management company that runs more than 50 residential buildings in Palm Beach County, said condo owners still reeling from the costs of hurricane repairs and insurance increases cannot afford the estimated $50,000 cost to equip an elevator for a generator.
"I don't think most condo owners and condo boards know about this at all," Inglis said of the law, which required owners to submit building plans to local governments by Dec. 31, 2006.
Palm Beach County building official Rebecca Caldwell said she has yet to receive any building plans, more than seven months past the deadline. But she is being lenient because she does not think the law got enough publicity, and it did not give building owners enough time to comply.
"That's why we're taking a soft approach instead of sending out code enforcement and breaking knees," Caldwell said. "An implementation date for drawings within six months was somewhat impractical."
Her department is searching its records to document all the buildings that meet the threshold and will send out warning letters in the next two weeks.
St. Lucie County spokesman Erick Gill said his county's building officials were not aware of the law until recently and are determining which condo buildings are affected.
Stone, of the state's emergency management department, said the wording of the elevator generator requirement "needs legislative update" because it is unclear about what state or local agency should enforce the law.
State Sen. Dennis Jones, R-Seminole, heard complaints from constituents in his area about the deadline, and he proposed a bill in April that would have extended it until December 2008.
The bill died in committee, but a spokesman for the legislator said Jones will propose it again next session.
Fugate said he is working with Gov. Charlie Crist to see if any changes need to be made.
Harrell and Adams both said they would be willing next year to make any legislative fixes that are needed. But Adams said the agencies have had a year to implement the law and never approached her with any concerns.
"I'm very upset with any agencies that went through a whole session without coming to me and saying they needed more time," Adams said. "This is very disheartening."