Gov. Jeb Bush urged Florida homeowners to read and understand the provisions of their insurance policy; study their vulnerabilities; and have an evacuation plan; during the May 11 opening of the annual Governor’s Hurricane Conference at Tampa Convention Center.
The 2005 19th annual conference drew 2,900 participants, including emergency managers from all 67 Florida counties and from as far away as Hawaii, making it the largest hurricane conference in U.S. history.
“The upcoming hurricane season could present us with challenges we didn’t see in 2004, believe it or not,” Bush said. “My fantasy would be the one that we all want, which is that there are no hurricanes in this hurricane season. We’ve done everything to prepare, but we don’t need another hurricane to hit us.”
Gov. Bush confirmed he had two bills on his desk awaiting approval, the 83-page Senate Bill 1486 and a bill proposing a 12-day tax sales holiday – he affirmed he planned to approve both bills.
Bush quipped about a requirement in SB 1486 which would require homeowners policies to be written in understandable language, cajoling everyone to make sure to read their policies now that they can be understood. He praised the bill for authorizing lower limits for Hurricane Catastrophe funding.
The governor cited the results of recent surveys that found 70 percent of Florida homeowners living within five miles of the coast had a hurricane evacuation plan.
“It’s the 30 percent that do not have an evacuation plan that I’m concerned about, that’s a lot of people” Bush said. “Floridians should safeguard their homes, stock up on food and batteries, plan an evacuation route and scrutinize their insurance policies before the storm season begins June 1.”
The governor said Floridians owe it to their emergency responders to be prepared for a storm season that could be just as active as the devastating summer and fall of 2004, which brought four hurricanes to the state.
“They’re pretty stupid,” Bush said. ‘It’s horrific to think about the fact that they’re putting other people’s lives in jeopardy by not being prepared.
“There are people at this conference that are firefighters, paramedics, first-responders of every type, volunteers, people in our emergency operation centers that are giving their lives for people after a storm. And I think the least in return we can give them is to have our homes ready.”
The governor urged everyone in the audience to do their best to convince Floridians to have an emergency plan and to stock their homes with hurricane supplies well in advance.
Bush said he couldn’t believe the supply situation last year, calling on everyone to initiate Sam Walton’s “just-in-time” inventory procedures.
He joined state and federal disaster leaders in pledging to fix the glitches that hampered their massive response to last year’s storms.
The governor said he and other officials are addressing problems such as slow delivery of food and water, gasoline shortages, shelters that could not withstand hurricane-force winds, and radio systems that prevented some emergency agencies from communicating with each other.
Bush said Florida officials learned a lot from the 2004 hurricane season have been able to identify some of the weaknesses that surfaced in their response system last year. He said this will make them better equipped this summer to deal with storms and their aftermath.
He pointed out that Florida is about to adopt Homeland Security’s new national incident management system to help prepare for hurricane season.
The governor said the implementation of a new high-tech database will improve communications between emergency personnel, hospitals and nursing homes.
“The healthcare sector was not a high enough priority in 2004,” Bush explained. “This year it is and we will be using high technology to monitor everything we can.” He pointed out that in 2004 there were a lot of hospitals that had not tested their emergency systems or even their generators, indicating that 2005 will be different.
“We also didn’t realize how high the requirements would be for our special needs shelters,” Bush said. “And we didn’t anticipate a hurricane that would just stall and require special needs shelters to remain open for as long as 10 days.”
Among aspects of storm response that have improved, Bush said, are communications between state, federal and local agencies; food, water and ice supply pipelines; better plans to handle special-needs storm victims for long periods of time, and more storm-proof communications equipment.
“As well as we did,… “We are going to do it better,” Gov. Bush concluded.
The conference continues today at the Tampa Convention Center with more workshops and presentations and concludes Friday. The closing general session will begin at 10:30 a.m. on Friday and include presentations by Joseph Becker, Red Cross senior vice president, preparedness and response; Dr. William Gray, a professor at the Colorado State University Department of Atmospheric Science, and Sam Miller, executive vice president of the Florida Insurance Council.
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