Osceola survives the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season

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Osceola survives the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season

County News

Friday, 30 November 2012 15:34

By Ken Jackson

Staff Writer
The 2012 Atlantic hurricane season ended Friday, with Osceola County and Central Florida being directly affected three times out of the 19 named storms that formed. Tropical Storm Debby came from the Gulf of Mexico and dumped about three inches of rain over two days in June. Hurricane Isaac blew to our west in August after putting emergency managers on alert when his projected path was perilously close to the peninsula for a bit. And Tropical Storm Sandy shared rain and wind gusts of tropical storm force from her 600-mile wide circulation the weekend before Halloween prior to ravaging the Jersey Shore and Long Island as a hurricane and “superstorm.”
County Emergency Operations Manager Rich Collins said his agency’s review of this year’s hurricane season was that it was a tough one operationally despite not being directly impacted by a hurricane.
“The hardest decisions to make are when you decide to close schools and roads or not based on path projections, it’s a real balancing act,” he said. “We feel we made the right decisions.”
In short, we were lucky.
With all of that out of the way, the staff of the county’s Office of Emergency Management isn’t taking any long holiday vacations. There’s still plenty to do.
A new set of weather-related hazards crops up in the winter. Cold fronts bring the possibly of freezing temperatures and generally make the humidity low. Since it’s the dry season anyway, the risk of red flag fire warnings and wildfires go way up.
“The county’s drought index is already up over 460 (on the Keetch-Bryan Index), and it was a dry November,” Collins said.
Come February and March, the threat of supercell storms and tornadoes, like the outbreak on Feb. 22-23, 1998 that killed 25 people in the Ponderosa RV Park, Lakeside Estates and Morningside Acres, increases as well.
Some of the operational work being done right now is to improve drafts of local evacuation routes — inbound for coastal residents fleeing a hurricane, and outbound routes for locals who would need to escape wildfires and other local threats.
So the work emergency planners are doing now is much like insurance — they are developing plans for the public that they hope they never have to use.
The county’s Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan, recently approved by the County Commission and available to the general public, includes response protocols for the widest range of disasters, catastrophes and incidents imaginable — the non-weather related list includes aircraft and railway emergencies, civil disorder, drought, sinkholes, Hazmat incidents, transportation, wildfires and terrorism.
The plan is designed for ease of use considering the number of agencies and government entities that will refer to it, Collins said.
“When a disaster strikes, they want a guide to go directly to that tells them what to do. With any disaster, most of the planning elements are universal,” he said.
He added that at the basic levels, all disasters are local.
“In Sandy, a million people were without power, and there are little towns and counties left to finish up the cleanup. You can see that their responders took the right things seriously,” he said.
“As a department, we look at those responses and ask what we can learn from Sandy to improve our plans. For instance, with so many people out of power, there has to be a system to get public information out to them.”
Collins said that effective communication with all those who make up the department’s Strategic Response Team makes the level of readiness achieved — County Manager Don Fisher said he “rests easy now thanks to the great work of Rich and his staff” — possible under tight economic constraints.
“If a catastrophe were to hit this area, we have the partnerships and support to respond quickly,” he said. “Our vendors make it possible on our limited budget. And I’d go anywhere with my team. They do incredible work.”
Informed and prepared citizens also play a role in effective crisis management, said Operations Manager Rich Halquist.
“Communities can respond to risk by being prepared, and recognizing what their role is,” he said. “For fire season for example, make sure your house is prepared by clearing dry debris away.”
Halquist said he recommends all families have a weather radio in their home.
“They are as important, I feel, as smoke detectors,” he said. “We can also use them to disseminate critical information that isn’t weather related.”
The radios generally cost from $30-80, and emergency management staff will help residents tune them for Osceola County-specific information at its office at U.S. Highway 192 at Partin Settlement Road.
Emergency management also employs staff to use the Internet and social media to distribute essential information.
The department’s website is www.mysafety.osceola.org, and also distributes breaking information on is Facebook (www.facebook.com/OsceolaEOC) and Twitter (@OsceolaEOC) pages.
“Osceola County is a vibrant community where citizens take a role in responding and recovering,” Collins said. “We help facilitate that.”