And the result very likely will be that fewer, not more, people can expect to leave their homes, and still fewer will feel the need to use a hurricane shelter, officials said at last week's Florida Governor's Hurricane Conference.
The American Red Cross is doing a full review of its shelter guidelines, set to be finished in 2017. That's the same year the National Hurricane Center will start issuing a public watch and warning format that combines the traditional wind threats with storm surge. The timing is no coincidence.
Managers studying where and how to build shelters, and when to use them, deal with four factors: water, wind, structure and decision-making. But the American Red Cross agrees with hurricane scholars that avoiding the danger of storm surge isn't a big enough part of emergency managers' decisions.
In the past, forecasters and emergency managers, in an abundance of caution, used formulas with funny acronyms, albeit for serious issues: MEOW for "maximum envelope of high water," and MOM for "maximum of the maximum."
Both can lead managers to evacuate more people than they should. They also can disqualify perfectly good shelters that happen to be in worst-case evacuation zones.
"In reality, a MOM will never happen, because it's based on every area using a worst-case scenario," retired Lee County (Fort Myers area) Emergency Manager John Wilson said at a Friday session of the conference, meeting this year in Orlando.
"Before, it was easy," said Carlos Castillo, a disaster program officer for the Red Cross' South Florida region, which covers Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties. "If you lived east of 'here,' you had to get out. But in '04 and '05 when we had to evacuate several times in the season, people were (saying), 'That's it. I'm not leaving anymore.'"
Palm Beach County changed its evacuation zones in 2012, fine tuning them in a way that left far fewer people in evacuation zones. County Emergency Manager Bill Johnson said Friday at the conference that the new research by the hurricane center and others "is adding to these tools that are helping us to better pinpoint evacuation areas and bring that target smaller and smaller year after year."
Johnson already has said he'd actually split off a portion of an evacuation area — say, in just the southern part of the county — if he's confident that's all he needs, "so we're moving fewer people and exposing them to the risks of evacuation.
"I don't like putting people on the road," he said.
Hurricane shelters in Palm Beach County are in most cases public schools. The American Red Cross coordinates shelters with local governments, establishes guidelines, and fills shelters with its volunteers. The bible for both the agency and emergency managers is a set of standards titled ARC 4496 that hasn't been revised since 2002.
"We are going to be looking at 4496 top to bottom," Rich Schofield, a Houston-based Southeast Area disaster director for the Red Cross, said Friday. Later this summer, he said the Red Cross will contact every emergency manager in Florida as part of the Red Cross' review.
For now, Schofield said, only Florida and Louisiana have hurricane shelter guidelines beyond the Red Cross' 4496. And Florida's stays busy maintaining its watch on its shelters.
Florida's Division of Emergency Management doesn't designate, certify or formally inspect shelters; that's the duty of local governments, said Danny Kilcollins, the division's planning manager for "infrastructure."
But, under a legislative mandate established after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 exposed a woeful lack of shelter space, the division surveys all of the state's shelters for capacity, sturdiness, and features.
Because the task is so daunting, the state does it only every two years. Its last survey was in 2014; the next comes up early next year. The state also spot checks periodically, Killcollins said.
The 2014 study identified 960,924 hurricane evacuation shelter spaces that met Red Cross guidelines. On top of that, the survey said, the perceived demand has been significantly reduced since the early 2000s because of improvements of public education and the drawing of more accurate evacuation zones through improved electronic measuring. A 2010 study alone reduced demand nearly in half, cutting 604,792 spaces and dropping the need to 886,541.
It also concluded that, projecting to 2019, Palm Beach County would be one of 41 counties with a surplus of general shelter spaces. In fact, the Treasure Coast region — Palm Beach, Martin, St. Lucie and Indian River counties — would have nearly 70,000 general shelter spaces above need.
But the study also showed Palm Beach County is one of those with a deficit in spaces for people with "special needs," and the division's Treasure Coast region totaled a deficit of nearly 3,000.
'Why do we shelter people?" asked Jeff Alexander, deputy director of St. Johns County Emergency Management in St. Augustine. "Is it because it's safer than being outside? Safer than being in an unstable structure? Out of the impact zone? Out of flood prone areas? To provide refuge? All of the above."
Alexander also repeated the mantra that emergency managers want the first choice of evacuees to friends or family, then a hotel, and then a public shelter, the least comfortable alternative.
©2015 The Palm Beach Post (West Palm Beach, Fla.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
