'Start preparing today': Q&A with Brevard’s emergency management director on 2022 hurricane season
With experts warning Floridians to prepare for an active hurricane season, FLORIDA TODAY met with John Scott, the Brevard County emergency management director.
The conversation focused on how his department is preparing for hurricane season, what residents should expect if an evacuation is ordered and what people need to do to prepare.
Question: What plans are you making to prepare for hurricane season this year?
Answer: It’s our typical plans. We are running through all of our, what we refer to, as our preseason checklists. We are making sure our shelters are stocked and ready to go. We're working with our partners to make sure they are ready to go. Partners are a big key to it. Disaster response is a team sport. A lot of what emergency management does is with the resources of other agencies ... so that is Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, that is Brevard County Parks, that is Brevard County Public Works, that is the school board, that is the Salvation Army, that is the Humane Society, that is United Way. I mean, it’s a vast, vast array of community partners.
Related: Will Florida dodge a major hurricane strike again in 2022? Forecast shows increased risk
More: Florida hurricanes: What to know about evacuating
Question: How far are you down on the checklist?
Answer: It’s a moving checklist. If I was to put them all together, it’s probably a football field in length. But it’s something we’re constantly working down. We will make tweaks and adjust all the way up to the storm.
Question: How different is this from last year?
Answer: We’re doing our typical work. The big difference this year versus last year is last year we had a lot of COVID protocols put in place, and a lot of additional steps that, fortunately, because of where we are, and we’re moving from pandemic to endemic, we’ve been able to take those down. We will still have masks. We will still have hand sanitizer for anyone who needs them in our shelters, in our emergency operation center, anywhere where we are going to congregate. You will see a return to more of a typical hurricane season. A big one for our sheltering would be the social distancing, we were spacing people out in much greater distance than we would traditionally ... given that is no longer needed operationally, we’re going to return to our traditional spacing.
Question: What kind of shelter will you use?
Answer: The same ones. We have general population shelters. We have shelters for those with special medical needs, and we have our pet friendly shelters. Generally, those are community centers and schools. If it is a school, then it could be gymnasium or it could be classrooms.
Florida weather: ‘Hurricanes don’t care about your timeline’: Experts urge preparation for storm season
Question: What are the shelters for those with special medical needs?
Answer: For a long time, we have run a special medical needs program that are for a variety of medical issues. Most often, it is for people who are power dependent, so if you are on oxygen. Those special medical needs shelters have generators in place. They will have medical support from the Department of Health, and nurses from the Department of Health to offer additional support. So it’s kind of the group that day to day lives at home very functionally, maybe they have a small level of home health care that comes by to check on them and those kinds of things. But they’re 90 to 95% independent, they need a couple of things, but power being sort of a big thing for them. That’s the only shelter that we ask that people register for. If they do not have transportation, we can provide transportation through Space Coast Area Transit.
Question: What is the best advice for residents for the coming hurricane season?
Answer: Start preparing today. We have the luxury of time to get ready. Sometimes folks react, so a storm comes and they feel like they have to go out and buy all their water and buy their food. That can be both expensive and hard, especially if everyone is doing the same thing. The nice thing about hurricanes is, the vast majority of the time, we are going to have notice.
Hurricane hacks: Tips for your dog, if you want coffee, in case you lose power or ride the storm
Question: What lessons from past hurricane seasons will you be applying this season?
Answer: One of the things I want to highlight is a strong lesson we learned. Historically, we used to put out a list every year of our shelters. What happened in Matthew was that there were so many lists out there. There were old lists cluttered with the new list. Our residents got very confused on what was and what was not open. From Irma on, we wait until an evacuation has been ordered, then a little bit later, we will publicize what shelters are going to be opened. It is a very storm-by-storm list.
Ralph Chapoco is a government and politics watchdog reporter. You can reach Chapoco at rchapoco@floridatoday.com and follow him on Twitter @rchapoco.
Support local journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Hurricane season: Brevard’s emergency management director talks storms
