Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Get ready for the ‘New normal’
Hurricane preparedness requires year-round mindset
If we’re entering a “new normal” with more frequent and more powerful hurricanes, then June 1 can no longer be the start of hurricane preparedness season.
Getting ready for the next storm is now a year-round vocation.
So say a diverse group of experts and advocates behind a renewed hurricane prep awareness program that’s off to a much earlier-than-normal start for next year.
“In 2017, we had three hurricanes that all set records,” said Craig Fugate, former director of both the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Florida Emergency Management Division. “This is our new normal, and now is the time to get ready.”
Longtime Florida residents know the drill — bottled water, batteries, flashlights, gas cans, canned goods.
Despite annual awareness efforts, sponsors and organizers of the National Hurricane Survival Initiative and its state-centric affiliate, Get Ready, Florida! say not enough people heeded the messages before Hurricane Irma barreled into the state last September. What’s more, results of a post-Irma, multiple-choice survey of 500 Florida residents taken Dec. 5 to 10 reveal that too many Floridians remain uninformed about the best and safest strategies to employ before, during and after dangerous hurricanes:
One in five — 22 percent — say their windows weren’t protected.
Asked to select an option to make their windows safer if they didn’t have shutters or impact-resistant windows, 17 percent made a wrong selection: “Tape on windows” (7 percent); “Cardboard on windows” (3 percent), or “Leave windows slightly open to stabilize pressure” (7 percent). Seventy-six percent correctly chose “Plywood on windows,” and 19 percent selected “None of these/Unsure.” [For some of the survey questions, total percentage points exceeded 100, meaning some respondents checked more than one answer.]
Nearly six in 10 said they didn’t know the dollar amount of their hurricane-insurance deductible. Half of respondents said it would be “somewhat difficult,” “very difficult” or impossible to come up with the amount of the average deductible — about $5,000 — to make repairs.
The question, “Which of the following
“This is our new normal, and now is the time to get ready.” Craig Fugate, former director, FEMA
locations is safe to run a generator following a power outage?” had 32 percent of respondents choosing one of these: “Any room other than a bedroom” (2 percent); “Any room with an open window” (4 percent); “Apartment balcony” (10 percent); “Crawlspace” (1 percent); “Garage” (13 percent); or “Attic or second floor” (2 percent).
Seventy-three percent chose “None of these locations are safe,” but the fact that one in four selected one of the others — any of which could end in the deaths of a home’s occupants — is proof that not enough Florida residents are prepared to get through the next storm, Fugate said.
Ron Sachs, CEO of the statewide advertising and public relations firm Sachs Media Group, has for 22 years served as executive producer of annual hurricane preparedness videos offered for free broadcast to TV stations throughout the state and nation.
The newest Florida-specific version — Get Ready, Florida! — will debut on South Florida’s CBS affiliate WFOR not in early June, but rather on Feb. 10 at 7:30 p.m.
This year’s special will cover subjects many residents don’t consider when getting ready for a hurricane, Fugate said. These include understanding what their insurance policy covers and how much their deductible is — and buying more insurance to reduce the deductible if they can’t cover it out-of-pocket.
Plus, too many people still don’t realize their regular property insurance policies, including hurricane insurance for wind damage, won’t cover destruction from rising flood waters, he said. Tens of thousands of Texans suffered the consequences of not having flood insurance after Hurricane Harvey dumped unprecedented amounts of water on the Houston region.
Just because someone isn’t in a special flood hazard zone and required to buy insurance if they have a federally backed mortgage doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have flood insurance, Fugate said.
One of the most important preparations homeowners can make before hurricane season is figuring out what makes their home vulnerable and finding the money to “harden” it, Sachs said.
“What we learned in this past storm season is many people who have older homes are unaware of what part of their home is most vulnerable — and that’s the garage door [if not reinforced according to current codes],” he said.
Special no-money-down programs are available to finance improvements, and much of the annual cost will be recouped through energy cost savings and discounts off insurance policies, he said.
This year’s Get Ready, Florida! program is fully funded by commercial sponsors, Sachs said, including insurers and storm-hardening home improvement contractors.
Sponsors of the National Hurricane Survival Initiative include: Custom Window Systems Inc.; Florida Home Improvement Associates; Security First Insurance; the National Emergency Management Association, a professional organization of state-level emergency managers; the International Hurricane Research Center at Florida International University; Salvation Army; StormPeace, a new gap insurance product intended to cover wind deductibles and other losses not covered by normal insurance policies; and Ygrene Energy Fund, one of several companies that provides financing for storm-hardening and energysaving home improvements through the Property Assessed Clean Energy program.
Steering much of the initiative’s messaging and agenda this year is the FAIR Foundation, an offshoot of the Fort Lauderdalebased insurance industry watchdog group Florida Association for Insurance Reform that promotes mitigation programs aimed at protecting residents from wind and flood damage in hurricanes, and from rising water levels caused by climate change.
The TV special is just one of a multipronged strategy by the FAIR Foundation to promote “education, mitigation and protection,” said Jay Neal, FAIR’s president and CEO.
The foundation also plans to focus on ways to get more public money into the hands of smaller Broward County cities with large inventories of older buildings and vulnerable populations, such as Lauderhill, North Lauderdale and Tamarac, he said.
In addition, he wants state officials to think about ways to help low-income residents buy supplies before storms hit, rather than pass out food assistance cards more than a month later. He recalled seeing a young man getting out of a taxi before Hurricane Irma and deliver a case of ramen noodles to an elderly resident who was sheltering in place.
“Instead of giving away all these cards after their food spoiled, maybe give them $100 that can only be used to buy food and water,” he said.