Is your city prepared?

[SouthFloridawx]

Tampa Bay is not ready. A big one would screw us over pretty badly.
JMO.

SHHH

[HurricaneGirl]

Last year the Riverside Area of Jacksonville flooded after Jeanne. We were not even close to the center of the storm. I would hate to see what the St. John's river would do from the surge of a major storm. In a nutshell, I don't think Jacksonville is ready.

[gtalum]

I don't think it's really possible to be "ready" for a major storm. At least it seems that no city ever has been, anyway.

[yzerfan]

My local government seems to be as ready as anyone ever can be for that kind of thing.

[Deb321]

Last year the Riverside Area of Jacksonville flooded after Jeanne. We were not even close to the center of the storm. I would hate to see what the St. John's river would do from the surge of a major storm. In a nutshell, I don't think Jacksonville is ready.

When I was in Jacksonville several weeks ago a torrential rain covered Baymeadows and Philips Hwy in a matter of minutes. IMO Jacksonville needs to focus on some type of flood control. They would be in real trouble if they were directly hit.

[inotherwords]

Well, given that nobody can seem to decide what's local/state government's role and what's not, I'd have to agree with those who say "NO."

I also think that Katrina set some expectations that few if any cities are prepared to accept.

One expectation is that the government evacuates people in evacuation zones. At least where I am, this is false. Nobody comes around with a bullhorn and tells you to get out. Nobody has buses lined up to take the elderly/indigent/sick anywhere. And in some cities, there wouldn't even be a reasonable place to gather people to bus them away like there was in New Orleans. And if that's the best of worlds in a city with good mass transit, imagine how awful it is if your poor and elderly are scattered all over with no transportation options.

Another problem is that there aren't enough shelters for people with pets. To many people their pets are their families and people on fixed incomes can't just drive off in their SUV and stay in a pet friendly hotel. There needs to be a way people can bring a reasonable number of pets with them.

Yet another problem: Katrina was a wakeup call and now we will most certainly have more people on the road in the event of a storm. FL, being a peninsula and heavily trafficked as it is, will be a potential nightmare in an evac situation for a Category 4 or 5.

Also, last year after Charley, I called FEMA and notified them I had two rental houses immediately available for refugees. It was off season, so I had vacancies and the rents were very reasonable. First off, it was almost impossible to find the resource to take down the info and put it in a database. Secondly, I did not get a call from FEMA until 3 months later asking me if I still had the places available. By then I had rented them out via the newspaper, and one of the families was a refugee couple from Charley. But they found it on their own, and not with the help of FEMA.

I'd like to see some sort of centralized database that helps evacuees find shelter easier, whether it's for a couple of days or a couple of months. This could be a public or private enterprise, it doesn't really matter, but I think it would be an important thing to establish.

[Persepone]

In a word, NO.

We just saw some evidence this week of how the "preparedness" here is foolish. There is some vague sense that if a disaster hit Cape Cod, they would evacuate people via the bridges...

Well, on a good tourist weekend in the summer, the bridges off Cape are backed up for literally hours and hours...

The idea is that you could make them "one way" off-Cape.

But hey, that won't work well. Route 6 on the Cape-bound side FLOODS and Thursday they CLOSED the Bridge because of the flooding. That left only one Bridge. The Borne Bridge was closed because normal (non-storm winds) blew pieces of the bridge off and through the windshield of someone's car and after they airlifted her to the hospital, they closed the bridge to secure the stuff that was falling off. That left NO bridges ON or OFF Cape Cod for quite some time. The traffic tie-ups were horrendous! And it is not tourist season and it was a weekday!

If the bridges are unlikely to be open for normal traffic when there is only a little wind or only a little rain, what chance would there be that they would be open/safe for evacuation before a major storm like a hurricane?

We see bridge problems fairly frequently. A disaster plan that is based on lots of traffic going across those bridges quickly is not realistic.

Furthermore, we have a lot of scheduled maintenance, etc. to be done that takes those bridges down to one lane--and if they needed to put the other lane back in service quickly, they could not do it if the bridge deck was torn up, etc.

We also have some "shelters" that are probably inadequate and many that are inaccessible. Camp Edwards is about a mile from my house as the crow flies, but I'd have to drive about 20 to get to the gate that is currently the only way in--and even if I got there, the chances of their letting me in are slim to none as security is very tight there. The local elementary schools, etc. that are designated as shelters are very small, are on roads that flood, etc. and would be quickly filled. There is a huge elderly population here and many have special needs--where would they go and how are they supposed to get there?

The regular signage here is terrible--half the people driving around on the roads are lost on a normal day. I can't imagine what would happen if they were in a hurry, if there were an emergency. There is virtually no emergency signage. There are no "emergency routes" or "evacuation routes" anything marked.

The maps of the Cape that are available are wrong in some important ways--roads that are shown as connecting major roads with others are nonexistent (our road is shown as connecting with Route 130--but the reality is that you'd need a tank with crawlie-things to get through. Even a Hummer could not make it. This is a common situation here where you find yourself backing 1/2 mile down a road that is too narrow to turn around in and that just suddenly ends instead of going where it shows it goes on a map.

There is a published emergency guide. If you read it and think about what it actually says, it immediately becomes apparent that it is pretty ridiculous and would not work in any actual emergency. It would be better not to have such a plan because the existence of this plan makes people think that it is a workable plan--and they don't bother to read it. For one thing, I think the people who wrote the plans haven't actually tried to drive the routes or they would find out the roads don't go through, etc. And when the roads do go through, etc. the plan does not take into consideration the fact that they flood, etc. and once the first few cars stalled out in the high water, the resulting traffic jams would make the route unuseable.

Our gas stations run out of gas &/or close for holidays when there is no emergency whatsoever. If everyone tried to fill their cars to get off the Cape, there would be no gas very quickly.

Cape Cod Hospital is right by the water and on fairly low ground so I think that would pose a huge problem... And it is a low building--there is little possibility of "vertical evacuation." I suspect this may be true of a bunch of nursing homes, etc. here as well.

The snowstorms last year pretty much shut down the Cape for several days and snowstorms are a "normal" occurrence in this climate. If any of the elderly in our neighborhood had had a medical emergency, it would have been just too bad because no emergency vehicles could have gotten through. Ditto fire trucks, etc.

The "plus side" of this is that "natives" know this and are pretty well prepared and are able to be self-reliant for fairly long periods of time. However, in the past few years there has been a huge influx of newcomers, many retirees, and I'm not sure they are aware of the need for the level of self-reliance they should prepare for. And of course the tourists, especially foreign tourists, don't have a clue when they come here!

By the way, there is a nuclear power plant very close by. However, because of some legal reason (I think it is that we are in a different county) there are no protections or plans that I know of for people who live on Cape Cod. So if you are as close as we are but on the mainland, there is a plan, but here there isn't one. The special anti-radiation pills are not available here, for example. I guess the idea is that radiation will not cross county lines. Totally stupid.

In short, the infrastructure just is not here to handle a disaster--natural or man-made. And I shudder to think of how any local police force would handle a problem. There is one--sort of--but certainly not enough officers to do the normal stuff, let alone for emergency.

[angelwing]

Philadelphia isn't prepared, we rarely get hit (last one was Floyd, tons of flooding)but supposedly the city is revamping evacuation plans because of Katrina.

[f5]

Katrina blew the lid off of the homeland security's "we are prepared slogan" if they can't handle a hurricane how do you expect them to be able to handle a bio-chemical attack in NYC which has a population around 15 million that makes new orleans look like its one of those small towns in the midwest

[wzrgirl1]

scary answers from some of you....makes me very uncomfortable

[inotherwords]

Persepone, very interesting about the Cape Cod situation. I guess my only positive contribution to your comments would be that you usually have a lot of notice beforehand, so that should help get most people off early. Also, in most cases, you probably get Cat 1 or 2 storms, which are bad enough but at least survivable in most cases. I am not sure what kind of storm surges you could expect there and what your elevation is. I'd be interested to learn more. I bet the situation is probably even more dire for a place like Martha's Vineyard where there's just a ferry to take people on and off the island.

[inotherwords]

scary answers from some of you....makes me very uncomfortable

Note that most of the people who said "yes" didn't explain why. I think overreaction is wrong, but I don't think one can overprepare for these storms. In this kind of situation, complacency--and unfortunately too much trust in government--cah be disastrous.

[iluvseashore]

Not much better on this side of Tampa Bay. EOC is still deciding where or even if they should plan for evacuees with pets. As of now I think there is only one shelter county wide for pet owners.

Most people have no idea what the storm surge could do here either. There needs to be more education ahead of a storm as well.

[wzrgirl1]

Well it looks as if we will be testing this question in the next few days with possible Rita threatening the Keys.

[jes]

Mobile's shelters will only standup to Cat. 3 storms. The Red Cross made that clear to us during Dennis when they refused to man our shelters. Every motel in Mobile is full with insurance adjusters so people who live in low areas can't get motel rooms on higher ground. I guess the only good part is that FEMA is already here ---- hope they have supplies left if, by some chance, Rita takes a Northern turn.

[inotherwords]

Not much better on this side of Tampa Bay. EOC is still deciding where or even if they should plan for evacuees with pets. As of now I think there is only one shelter county wide for pet owners.

Most people have no idea what the storm surge could do here either. There needs to be more education ahead of a storm as well.

I think we need to ask the Tampa Bay mets to step up to this challenge. This year was the first time I'd heard from our local Sarasota met, Bob Harrigan, (who is excellent) that the maximum surge we could see here in Sarasota County would be 18 feet due to topography. I had no idea about that. He also said, post-Katrina, that parts of south Sarasota County would have water up to 1-75 in a Category 5 storm. Also, the first time I've seen anyone admit that, too, but I'd like to know more. For example, how deep? If worst case scenario is one foot or ten feet deep from US 41 to I-75, I'd like to know that. Stuff like this is important for us to know if we want to make informed decisions.

Also, the map they send out each year that designates the evacuation zones is so tiny that it's impossible to read. I have no idea if I'm a Cat 2 or 3 zone because in my area, 1, 2, and 3 are so close together. I need more detailed maps.

[Persepone]

Persepone, very interesting about the Cape Cod situation. I guess my only positive contribution to your comments would be that you usually have a lot of notice beforehand, so that should help get most people off early. Also, in most cases, you probably get Cat 1 or 2 storms, which are bad enough but at least survivable in most cases. I am not sure what kind of storm surges you could expect there and what your elevation is. I'd be interested to learn more. I bet the situation is probably even more dire for a place like Martha's Vineyard where there's just a ferry to take people on and off the island.

Hurricanes are less scary (because there is a lot of notice beforehand) than other types of disasters: problems at the Nuclear Power Plant, Terrorism, etc. And yes, you are right, they tend to be Cat 1 or Cat 2 at most. On the other hand, there is not as much warning as you might think. Hurricanes tend to accelerate as they come up the coast. Most people do NOT watch Storm2K (or even NHC/NOAA forecasts, etc.) and don't expect them to come up the coast and make another landfall once they have hit Florida, North Carolina, etc.

The ferries take people off Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard and bring them to Cape Cod! Now they have to get off Cape Cod as well...

We personally have a house that is well situated, is on some of the highest ground on Cape Cod, is about as far away from the beaches as you can get, etc. So it is less of a "personal" worry than one for others... I do feel that the tourists, etc. here would be sitting ducks, especially the foreign tourists. And somehow that seems morally wrong. We should have marked evacuation routes, etc. Many nursing homes, etc. are very close to the water and just a few feet above sea level (10 feet? 15 feet? less?). Much of the rental property for tourists, etc. is, as you might expect, right on or near the beaches. People who move here from other places have absolutely no sense of what it might look like during/after a storm. (I did have an idea because although I only moved here a few years ago, my grandmother had property out here--in 195os it washed out to sea and is now out off the coast of Wellfleet somewhere... Also, I've been near coastal waters much of my life.) But I meet people who moved here from places like Indiana and they have no clue!

Some university (the link is somewhere here on Storm2K but I don't know where it is) did a study of potential storm surge for most of the coasts and the one for Cape Cod, the Cape Cod Canal and Buzzard's Bay suggests that with the right "hit" even a weak storm (e.g., Cat 1) would have a 30 foot storm surge--and that would probably make me "waterfront property."

But the computer simulation for what could potentially be under water from storm surge is really sobering and I don't see any evidence that the people who put together the emergency plan took storm surge into account at all.

But forgetting storm surge, really strong winds, etc. the plain vanilla emergency plans don't make any sense because they assume that people's cars can travel through 4+ feet of standing water and other such stupidity. If a given road is under too much water to drive through whenever we have a "normal" rainstorm, why would it suddenly be high and dry during a hurricane? And what are the chances that it is raining when the terrorism attack occurs? It's too much to hope for dry roads...

There actually is one other hazard that is sort of scary around here and that is the threat of brush fire. Even a relatively small one could very effectively block off the "exit routes." I understand this has happened in the past...

I do not think you can eliminate the hazards, nor can you really effectively plan for all types of disasters, etc. But I do think that it is almost better to have "no plan" than a plan that won't work out of the starting gate! I think that part of the problem in NOLA is that they had a plan that could not work/did not work and everyone wanted to "stick to the plan" well beyond the point where they should have done so. And when you combine a plan that does not work with "it's not MY job" mentality you have the secondary disaster that we saw in New Orleans. So yeah, much of my rant is that there is this nice glossy printed document that lulls people into thinking that there is a workable plan and that they can look to local/state/federal officials when in fact they'd better not count on it.

This is the logic being used to prosecute the owners of the nursing home that had an evacuation plan and did not evacuate their patients! If there is a plan that is not used, or a plan that for one reason or another cannot be used, then it is worse than "no plan." If you had had a relative in a nursing home and you knew it would not be evacuated, perhaps you would have swung by and loaded that relative into your car on your way out of town rather than counting on them being evacuated "by someone."

[TampaBayBee]

Tampa Bay is not ready. A big one would screw us over pretty badly.
JMO.

As far as evacuations, the entire Tampa Bay area was evacuated in a very organized manner for Hurricane Charley. That's a big start.

[Tampa Bay Hurricane]

Tampa Bay is not ready. A big one would screw us over pretty badly.
JMO.

As far as evacuations, the entire Tampa Bay area was evacuated in a very organized manner for Hurricane Charley. That's a big start.

It was? Well that's good to hear Good at least we won't be totally screwed...

[krysof]

How would NYC evacuate?