Florida warned to prepare all year for stronger storms

TALLAHASSEE — Many Hurricane Irma evacuees say they’re apprehensive about packing up and leaving their homes again because forecast models failed to match the final track of the September storm.

That worries Craig Fugate, a former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Florida Division of Emergency Management, including during the state’s devastating 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons.

He said Thursday that Floridians must brace for storms that will be stronger, have longer periods at top speeds and bring more rain than in the past because of the changing climate.

Fugate, during a conference call from the National Hurricane Survival Initiative about a new website and year-round awareness campaign titled “Get Ready, Florida!,” said people are expecting a level of forecasting that “isn’t there yet.”

Instead, people should continue to anticipate some uncertainty in forecasting, he said.

“If we knew exactly where it was going to hit it would be a lot easier, but it isn’t,” Fugate said. “As we saw with Irma, a slight jog east or west of that track, we’d have been in a lot different impact.’’

The conference call highlighted the need for people in Florida to plan year-round for the six-month hurricane season and for people who live outside flood zones to consider flood insurance.

A survey by the initiative found one in four Floridians are now less trusting of hurricane forecasts because of Irma. It also found that many Floridians entered the 2017 storm season without such things as adequate window protection, backup batteries and water supplies or failed to have evacuation plans.

A Mason-Dixon Polling & Research poll in mid-October found that only 57 percent of Floridians said they would follow an evacuation order in the face of a hurricane similar in strength to Irma because the drifting nature of the storm’s track initially had an East Coast landing.