"It's human nature," said Rick Knabb, director of the National Hurricane Center. When hurricanes don't happen, people forget about them.
This week the country's leading emergency managers and hurricane officials are meeting in Austin at the annual National Hurricane Conference, and this year the buzz has been about the recent lull in Gulf of Mexico activity and how that has made preparations for the season, which begins June 1, more difficult.
The last hurricane to threaten the Gulf states was Hurricane Ike, which slammed into Galveston Island in September 2008 and caused more than $25 billion in damages, making it the third costliest U.S. hurricane on record.
But since then, while storms such as Sandy have pummeled the northeastern United States, the Gulf of Mexico has seen a nearly unprecedented run of inactivity. Florida hasn't seen a hurricane in nearly 10 years. Before now, the state's longest hurricane-free period over the last century and a half of records was five years.
In the last decade more than 1 million people have moved into Florida, many of them unfamiliar with the threat of tropical storms.
The upper Texas coast has seen similar growth. Much of the residential expansion in Houston has come between the city and the coast. League City, a community tucked between Clear Lake and Galveston Island that is less than 20 feet above sea level, has grown 30 percent to a population of more than 90,000 since Ike.
Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was maligned after Hurricane Katrina but has since taken steps to improve disaster response, said he understands why people want to live near the water.
"You live along the Gulf coast and it’s absolutely gorgeous," he said. "But when you live in paradise there is a price. So while these storms don't happen often, you've got to be ready for what could happen."
For emergency officials such as Fugate, that means having a plan.
His agency conducted a survey last year and found that only 50 percent of Americans have discussed or developed an emergency plan for family members about where to go and what to do in the event of a local disaster.
When it comes to hurricanes that means, first and foremost, identifying whether a residence lies in an evacuation zone. For the upper Texas coast, Harris County has this information on its website.
For people who live in an evacuation zone, experts say, families should talk about where they will go if an evacuation is called, and identify how they will reach that destination.
Homeowners and renters should also make sure their insurance for flood and wind is current, and take reasonable precautions to strengthen their homes.
Once those steps are taken, Fugate said, coastal residents can worry less about their properties and spend more time enjoying the water.
©2015 the Houston Chronicle. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
