Emergency Management Director Addresses Florida’s Hurricane Response Weaknesses

The failures that left thousands of Florida residents unprepared for Hurricane Wilma should be addressed by launching a new election-style marketing campaign, expanding the tax-free shopping week and beefing up Florida’s evacuation plans, according to Craig Fugate, the state’s emergency management director.

“We have lost our culture of preparedness in this state, and we now have to quickly learn how to restore it,” Fugate told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel.

Fugate said Wilma, which left millions of people without food, water and power for days, showcased the urgent need to boost public awareness.

Fugate admitted the state was still investigating the reasons so many got caught.

Prior to the storm’s landfall, Fugate noted, thousands of permanent residents of the Keys refused to evacuate despite sharp warnings by the government and storm advisories. He said government officials already know some of the excuses: costly hotel stays on the mainland, the cost of gasoline and fear among many business owners there that they’d lose tourist business by shutting down or evacuating.

“We have to look at the economic barriers to evacuation,” Fugate said. “Unfortunately in Monroe County, we did not see a high percentage of residents leave.”

As a first step, Fugate said he and the governor want to hire marketing experts to survey people about how they responded to government advisories and why some people didn’t heed orders to leave.

The state’s current hurricane warning system, Fugate said, gets information “to the people who want to hear the message but not necessarily to the people who need to hear it.”

He called for an election-style campaign to educate Floridians about how and why they must get prepared.

Fugate said he will recommend that lawmakers overhaul the state’s tax-free hurricane shopping week by making it earlier in the year and possibly adding items that can be purchased without paying the sales tax.

Fugate said an ideal date for the sales tax holiday now held in June would be the third week of May each year in advance of a planned National Day of Preparedness prior to Memorial Day weekend.

Topics Florida Catastrophe Natural Disasters Hurricane