Hurricane Lessons Seem Largely Ignored

In these last days before the June 1 start of hurricane season, forecasters and disaster-response planners are coming to the dispiriting conclusion that few lessons were learned last year from Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

Waterfront construction continues to boom along the Gulf of Mexico and Florida’s Atlantic coastline, with tens of thousands of new homes in harm’s way alongside the rebuilding of those demolished.

More than 100,000 people displaced by last year’s storms are still living in government trailers, despite emergency planners’ warnings that the temporary shelters are at risk of blowing apart, like most mobile homes in the region, if even a strong tropical storm passes.

Most city, state and federal emergency management authorities still can’t communicate by phone or radio in a crisis because a $2-billion special outlay for “interoperability” is mired in legislative wrangling or being spent without federal coordination.

And Lake Okeechobee, with an eroding retention dike said to be near collapse, has evoked chilling comparisons to the New Orleans levees that burst under the deluge from Katrina. The elevated lake in western Palm Beach County looms over 40,000 residents, the ecological security of the Everglades and the purity of all of South Florida’s drinking water.

These causes for worry persist through no lack of preseason planning. Three thousand emergency response officials flocked to Gov. Jeb Bush’s five-day hurricane conference in Fort Lauderdale last week, and meteorologists from the National Weather Service have been hopscotching across the region chanting the mantra: Be prepared.

To the dismay of those who dedicate their lives to advising coastal communities on what to expect, the warnings often fall on deaf ears.

“Experience is not always a good teacher,” Max Mayfield, head of the National Hurricane Center, said during a break in his barnstorming through Hurricane Alley, the vast storm-prone stretch that runs from the Windward Islands through the Caribbean to the shores of North and Central America.

Local, state and federal officials have been showering Florida and Gulf households with survival-planning checklists and stepping up public relations work to persuade those at risk to stock up, shore up and ship out ahead of a storm’s landfall.

“We are encouraging every individual, every family, every business to have a hurricane plan in place before the start of the season,” Mayfield said. “There’s too much stress with a hurricane bearing down on you to leave the planning to the last minute.”

But he’s not encouraged by recent experience.

Just two months after Floridians watched the suffering inflicted on New Orleans by Katrina, thousands ignored weeklong warnings that Hurricane Wilma was headed their way, failing to buy even the most basic emergency provisions. However, they lined up within 24 hours of the Oct. 24 storm demanding bottled water and ice from local officials, Mayfield recalled.

In perhaps the most disturbing element of deja vu for disaster planners, a team of experts warned in late April that the dike around Okeechobee poses a 1-in-6 chance of failure this year. Gov. Bush appealed to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to undertake urgent repairs and ordered the State Emergency Response Team to prepare to evacuate those living in the elevated lake’s shadow.

The corps has long known of the dike’s underground leakage and perforation -- the expert report from the South Florida Water Management District described the erosion as bearing “a striking resemblance to Swiss cheese.” Repairs are underway, and emergency mitigation plans have been developed, said Nancy Regalado, spokeswoman for the Jacksonville office. She described the water management report by three respected specialists as “really convoluted,” because it evaluated the 70-year-old ring of levees against the requirements of a dam.

The difference between a dike and a dam is significant in securing funds for repair. Congressional action is needed for dike upgrades, but dam safety projects are eligible for emergency funding because they protect human lives. Dikes and levees, by contrast, are classified as protecting property.

“The standards for a dam are much, much higher than the standards to which it was built,” Regalado said of the 140-mile-long Herbert Hoover Dike, built piecemeal around Okeechobee after a 1928 hurricane swept lake water over surrounding towns, killing almost 3,000 people.

Corps engineers are less alarmed than some state authorities because the report’s dire predictions are based on a lake level of 26 feet, but the water has never been higher than 18.5 feet, Regalado said. Heavy rainfall during a hurricane could cause the regulated lake level to rise, but hydrologists are still trying to factor “how many Wilmas in a row” would be needed to fill the earthen bathtub to a truly dangerous level, Regalado said. Hurricane Wilma dumped heavy rain across South Florida and damaged Okeechobee’s retaining structures.

As in the decades-long debates over what to do about New Orleans’ levee vulnerabilities, emergency responders fear federal authorities are strangled by red tape and stymied by technical differences of opinion.

“I don’t have the luxury of vetting reports. I have to deal with the information I have, and that is that it’s prudent for us to have the capability of evacuating prior to a hurricane,” said Craig Fugate, the Florida emergency management director.

Towns in the shadow of the dike, including Belle Glade, Pahokee and South Bay, are home to farmers and laborers, including seasonal illegal immigrants who often speak no English and may be frightened by uniformed government employees telling them they have to leave, Fugate said. And unlike the affluent communities along the coasts, many living near Okeechobee are poor and lack transportation.

Another infrastructure weakness spotlighted by last year’s storms was the hodgepodge of communications systems in the danger zone. Private radio and phone networks operated by most municipal police and firefighters cannot communicate with state emergency operations centers or the Federal Emergency Management Agency, warns Joe Wright, a telecom executive and member of the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.

“I consider this to be a national emergency,” said Wright, pointing to forecasts of another active hurricane season. The $2-billion Homeland Security appropriation for outfitting local emergency response teams with satellite technology is being spent, but without sufficient federal oversight or adherence to uniform standards, he said, warning that some municipalities “are going to simply upgrade their incompatibility.”

The coastal building boom makes meteorologists and disaster planners shake their heads.

“It really bothers us to see all the new construction along the Gulf Coast where there wasn’t a stick left after last year,” Jim McFadden, aircraft program chief for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said after a recent flight over the Beaumont, Texas, area denuded by Hurricane Rita.

Florida’s Building Commission constantly retools statewide codes, with more stringent restrictions on construction in the most hurricane-prone counties, said Jennifer Messemer, spokeswoman for the Miami-Dade building code compliance office. Metal shutters and impactresistant glass were made mandatory after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. But building officials in Florida’s most populous county concede the pace of housing construction hasn’t slowed despite last year’s record-breaking storm season.

Tourism also continues to expand. Visit Florida, the state’s official vacation and event planning service, now offers free “Cover Your Event” insurance for business meetings that have to be rescheduled during the August-October period.

“Leisure travelers tell us they are not going to live their lives around whether a hurricane is going to occur or not. The market that was most concerned was the meetings market,” said Visit Florida communications director Vanessa Welter.

The Florida Legislature jumped in this month to encourage hurricane preparations, passing a 12-day tax holiday on supplies such as portable generators, radios and nonelectric food storage coolers. The tax holiday coincides with today’s start of National Hurricane Preparedness Week.

Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration launched their preseason information campaign earlier this month, traveling through the tropical storm zone in a P3 “Hurricane Hunter” to show visitors how they forecast, track and research hurricanes as they develop. The team flew to five southeastern U.S. venues, and to half a dozen islands in the Caribbean.

Although thousands turned out at each stop, the scientists conceded their tours mostly preached to the converted.

“Unfortunately, most people learn through experience, and hurricanes are no exception. People have to go through it once or twice before they say, ‘Hey, we need to get ready for this well ahead of time,’ ” said Robert Molleda, a hurricane center meteorologist who coordinates forecasts and warnings with 25 other countries in the region. “Forecasting is only one part of the process. It’s no good if nobody heeds our advice.”