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COVID-19 Collides with Hurricane Season, Spawning Policy Changes

Aligning EOC activation, shelter-in-place policies and other emergency management functions with requirements forced by the coronavirus spread has made Galveston emergency management rework its response protocol.

Storms and hurricanes in the Galveston, Texas, area usually mean a packed EOC, but the invasion of the coronavirus has forced some major adjustments for public safety and emergency management personnel.

Hurricane season officially begins June 1, but the EOC in Galveston has been activated for months as storms pelted the area with heavy rainfall. But the activation had to align with current social distancing policies, and the declarations of essential and non-essential personnel.

During activation of the EOC, staff and the essential workers who normally congregate in the EOC have had to confine themselves to different rooms and wear masks when they come into contact with others. The business of emergency management, usually done in a group setting in an EOC, is being done virtually, for the most part.

“The first part of that is we’ve had to make some adjustments to our essential list,” said Mark Morgan, Galveston’s chief of emergency management. “With the COVID-19 restraints, some of our office personnel were deemed nonessential and allowed to go home.”

Morgan actually began preparations for hurricane season and its collision with the coronavirus weeks ago in the form of daily, virtual meetings. “We set up a partnership group to share information so that everybody would know how to react, and all the data we were passing it along to the chamber of commerce, school districts, hospitals, the universities,” he said.

Morgan has also addressed the 211 community services number and updated the list of people who have registered for a need-a-ride program in case of evacuation before a hurricane. “We had to go through that list and verify the correct numbers to make sure everyone is up to date with their numbers.”

The list identifies the number of people who may need to be evacuated, and with the continued coronavirus spread, they would need personal protective equipment as well. “We’ll have thermometers to take their temperatures and we’ll have an assessment station before they’re allowed to get on a bus to go to a shelter,” Morgan said.

Also, the number of buses that will be needed may have to be doubled from 14 to 28 to keep up the social distancing, he said.

The three recent storms have dumped a lot of water on Galveston, and the tide has been surging. Morgan said he is looking at adjusting the inundation plans regarding the surge as they pertain to shelter-in-place. “We’re going to have to discuss shelter-in-place locations and look more closely at the actual tidal surge inundation plan, and make sure that if we have people that are outside of the inundation area they can stay at home instead of leaving.”

Morgan said people are already starting to become weary of the social distancing rules and he is concerned about a second wave of the coronavirus. With not much to do and few places to go, the beaches in the area have become crowded with gatherings of more than 100,000 already, more than the usual 60,000 visitors.

The local hospital has 80 coronavirus patients and about 400 beds. “I’m concerned because people have stopped following the rules,” Morgan said. “There’s only so much we can do to have them follow the rules.”

So Morgan will continue to adjust his emergency management staff, thinking long-term. “One of the things I’m going to have to address long-term is the essentials list.” He said he was already setting up laptop stations to make the EOC portable for catastrophic events, so he is ahead of the game in that sense.

“I think it’s policy we’re going to have to change in the future because of the COVID-19 and having to have separation, the laptops and docking stations are going to be crucial going forward.”