Health crisis could change storm planning
PALM BEACH, Fla. – Emergency managers pleaded with willful Floridians in 2016 to flee as Hurricane Matthew hurtled toward the East Coast with one infamous entreaty querying the supply of body bags to motivate stalwarts.
If a hurricane threatens this season, some evacuation requests may be replaced by stay-at-home orders as officials struggle to minimize the spread of the coronavirus.
Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Jared Moskowitz said he will have a plan this month that outlines guidance for counties on how they may want to handle storms differently to contain infections. Details could include requiring people in hurricane-fortified homes to stay put through a storm.
“If you have a Cat 1 or Cat 2 storm and your house was built after Hurricane Andrew, maybe we issue you a stay-athome order rather than an evacuation order,” Moskowitz said in an April call about reopening the state. “Do we change the concept of evacuating at all?”
Sheltering in hotels
With hurricane season beginning June 1, emergency managers are considering how they will juggle a tropical cyclone while avoiding a crush of people in shelters, crowded onto evacuation buses and in need of aid – already stretched thin – after a storm.
Some options Moskowitz noted could include using the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s transitional sheltering assistance program before a storm makes landfall to put people in hotels instead of opening schools where it could be difficult to maintain social distancing.
The hotels may be eager for the business early in the hurricane season as the
state wakes from its coronavirus coma, Moskowitz said.
Hiring ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft to ferry people out of harm’s way instead of loading them onto mass transportation, and issuing gas cards to unemployed people, are also being considered.
If power goes out
Florida Power & Light is warning customers it may take extra time to restore electricity with the possibility of limited help from outside resources and the added precautions of social distancing. Eric Silagy, president and CEO of FPL, said during the April call that housing for utility workers may be a challenge, especially if they are competing with evacuees for hotel rooms.
Moskowitz’s hurricane proposals likely will be divided by early-season cyclones, which are typically weaker systems that would coincide with the stirrings of businesses reopening, versus those that grow during the tropically fertile months of August through October.
Moskowitz reasons early-season storms mean more manageable evacuations and recovery. “As we get into August, maybe hotel rooms aren’t the strategy and we go back to mass shelters,” he said. “If you start getting to August and September and you are looking at a Cat 3 or 4, then the stay-at-home order isn’t going to be as effective.”
Major storms this year
The 2020 hurricane season should get an early start this weekend. There was a 70% chance of tropical development near Florida and the Bahamas within the next five days, as of Wednesday, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Since the system is forecast to remain well off the Southeast coast and track farther out to sea, it should not have any direct impacts on the Southeast coast, according to weather.com. But Florida will see rough beach conditions and increasing rain chances this week before the system forms Thursday into Friday.
In early summer, most storms form in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico as the atmosphere starts its seasonal wind-up. By August, the mid-level African Easterly Jet is beginning to spin waves off the continent like pinwheels that can ultimately form the strongest hurricanes.
While dozens of Category 1 hurricanes have bloomed in the first two months of hurricane season, just one major hurricane on record has made landfall in the U.S. in June – 1957’s Hurricane Audrey, which hit western Louisiana as a Category 3 on June 27. A major hurricane is a Category 3 or higher.
Hurricane Dennis made landfall southeast of Pensacola as a Category 3 storm July 10, 2005.
The National Hurricane Center emphasizes that wind speed doesn’t always correlate with a storm’s danger. Massive Hurricane Florence in 2018 was a Category 1 when it made landfall near Wrightsville Beach, N.C. Still, water roared 100 miles up the Neuse River, piling 11 feet of storm surge into the historic city of New Bern, N.C.
In Florida, evacuation zones are based largely on storm surge, not wind speed.
Colorado State University researcher Phil Klotzbach said early-season activity is the hardest to predict, but there are signs a flare-up is possible.
“Sea surface temperatures are often the limiting factor in formation of earlyseason tropical storms,” said Jeff Masters, Weather Underground co-founder and a meteorologist for Scientific American. “I expect that the warmer-thanaverage ocean temperatures currently being observed across the typical formation region for early-season storms – the Gulf of Mexico, Western Caribbean and waters surrounding the Bahamas – will increase the odds of an early-season storm this year.”
Storm-disrupting wind shear also is forecast to be low for June and July, bolstering the possibility for early storms, Masters said.
Separate or segregated shelters?
If mass shelters must be opened, evacuees may have their temperatures taken or undergo rapid coronavirus testing at the door. Moskowitz said the state is already working with Abbott Labs and others to get additional tests for shelters.
“Currently, unless you are medically unstable, it’s come one, come all to the shelters, which are there to save lives from storm surge, bottom line,” said Palm Beach County Emergency Management Director Bill Johnson. “I’m not sure how pragmatic it will be to have separate COVID shelters.”
Johnson said people may be asked to go to segregated areas in a shelter if they have a fever or aren’t feeling well. Also, Palm Beach County shelters give each person 20 square feet of space, but that could shrink to allow for more social distancing.
“My biggest fear is that people who should evacuate won’t evacuate because they think there aren’t safe options,” Johnson said.