A boat moved by Hurricane Michael rests near a canal in May in Mexico Beach, Fla. Seven months after the hurricane made landfall, the town is still littered with heavily damaged or destroyed homes and businesses. Scott Olson/Getty Images
npr.org - by Greg Allen - June 7, 2019
As another hurricane season begins, emergency managers and other officials throughout the Southeast and along the Gulf Coast are applying lessons they learned last year during Hurricane Michael. Those lessons include how they conduct evacuations . . .
. . . we're going to start seeing a lot of things change . . .
. . . Among those likely changes: how people prepare for storms, how many evacuate and how strong new construction on Florida's Panhandle will need to be to survive hurricanes like Michael.
fastcompany.com - by Katharine Schwab - November 15, 2018
. . . One Concern is launching a machine learning platform that provides cities with specialized maps to help emergency crews decide where to focus their efforts in a flood. The maps update in real-time based on data about where water is flowing to estimate where people need help the most. It’s the latest in a wave of AI-powered tools aimed at helping cities prepare for an era of severe, and increasingly frequent, disasters.
As hurricane activity starts to ramp up, Meteorologist Bobby Deskins is tracking a wave in the Windward Islands that's expected to bring heavy rain to the Southeast early next week. USA TODAY
usatoday.com - by Doyle Rice - August 29, 2018
The sleeping giant may be about to awaken.
Hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico is forecast to ramp up over the next couple of weeks. "Weather models have flipped the switch on the Atlantic hurricane season and see multiple areas of development possible, starting mainly this weekend," weather.us meteorologist Ryan Maue said.
Resilience Hubs are community-serving facilities augmented to:
1. support residents and
2. coordinate resource distribution and services before, during, or after a natural hazard event.
They leverage established, trusted, and community-managed facilities that are used year-round as neighborhood centers for community-building activities. Designed well, Resilience Hubs can equitably enhance community resilience while reducing GHG emissions and improving local quality of life. They are a smart local investment with the potential to reduce burden on local emergency response teams, improve access to health improvement initiatives, foster greater community cohesion, and increase the effectiveness of community-centered institutions and programs.
miaminewtimes.com - by Jerry Iannelli - May 2, 2018
In the long, hot, powerless days after Hurricane Irma, Miamians grew all sorts of irate at Florida Power & Light, South Florida's largest electricity company. After sweltering for more than a week without power, a group of sweaty Miami-area residents sued FPL last year over the widespread outages after the storm.
Despite the fact that FPL says it spent more than $3 billion hardening its power grid after Hurricane Wilma hit in 2005, 4.4 million of the company's 4.9 million customers (about 90 percent) lost power during last year's hurricane despite the fact that Miami ended up avoiding sustained hurricane-force winds. In their class-action lawsuit against FPL, filed in county court September 26, the residents alleged the company misspent those storm-hardening funds.
A new study found that hurricanes intensify more quickly now than they did 30 years ago. Hurricanes from 2017 like Irma (center), and Jose (right) are examples of these types of hurricanes. Hurricane Katia is seen on the left. (Photo: NOAA)
usatoday.com - by Doyle Rice - May 10, 2018
With the start of hurricane season just three weeks away — and memory of last year's disastrous storms still fresh — scientists reported that powerful hurricanes are strengthening faster than they did 30 years ago.
Four of the monster hurricanes last year (Harvey, Irma, Jose and Maria) all intensified rapidly — when the maximum wind speed increases at least 29 mph within 24 hours . . .
. . . According to a study out this week, the main cause appears to be a natural climate phenomenon that warms the seawater where hurricanes typically intensify in the Atlantic.
A transmission tower and downed lines in the mountainous terrain of eastern Puerto Rico. Workers from the island and throughout the United States have worked to restore power after Hurricanes Irma and Maria last September.
It took months to restore electricity in Puerto Rico after hurricanes dealt a one-two punch. Many homes are still without power, and the system’s future is far from certain.
nytimes.com - by JAMES GLANZ and FRANCES ROBLES - Photographs by TODD HEISLER - May 6, 2018
. . . After Maria and the hurricane that preceded it, called Irma, Puerto Rico all but slipped from the modern era . . .
. . . an examination of the power grid’s reconstruction — based on a review of hundreds of documents and interviews with dozens of public officials, utility experts and citizens across the island — shows how a series of decisions by federal and Puerto Rican authorities together sent the effort reeling on a course that would take months to correct. The human and economic damage wrought by all that time without power may be irreparable.
No person or place is immune from disasters or disaster-related losses, and recent events have proven that even prepared communities can be overwhelmed in a state of emergency. Our reports provide guidelines and targeted resources for all stakeholders in a disaster response, including state and local governments, emergency medical services and health care centers. Read these online for free. CLICK HERE - Related Books
