Zephyrhills prepared???

With the Katrina disaster and the ensuing rescue foul ups clearly in mind it’s time to think about just how well or ill prepared Zephyrhills is.

First, a few major-storm assumptions:

No power
No water
Lots of debris in the streets
If it’s late in the hurricane season lots of dead Yankees who didn’t leave their mobile homes. Those who didn’t die will be confused, stumbling, homeless elderly folks who now have no roofs, no cars and little understanding of what it’s like to be hit by a hurricane.
Some flooding, but nothing like New Orleans.
No cellphones or land line phones.
No help from outside for at least 72 hours.

The first thing the city needs is a plan. Who is going to do what with whom.

What role will the police have? It can’t be business as usual because there will be no central dispatch capability, the Nextels won’t work. Is there a car-to-car radio function? Does anybody know how it works? Is there an alternate communications plan in place using, say, ham radio operators and their equipment to dispatch and coordinate police operations? No? Has anybody been tasked to put such a plan together? What will be the police priorities? Safeguarding WalMart, or protecting its citizens houses from looters? Where will arrestees be detained?

Pretty much the same goes for fire and ambulance services, but fire may have no working hydrants and ambulance may have no local hospitals in operation. Has anyone planned for those contingencies? (Yes, there are ways to work around those problems.)

Does the city have tents, portable flood lights, generators to set up a central disaster center? A place to meet the needs of the residents for food, water, clothing? If not, has anyone been tasked with gathering and storing the assets and developing a plan?

Has the city stockpiled any MREs, bottled water, emergency fuel supplies?

Does the city have a sand bag filling machine, or do the elderly have to shovel their own bags full and then lug them around just like last time?

Has anyone been detailed to be in charge of emergency operations? No, not the city manager or the police chief, but somebody who has actually managed a disaster.

When the storm clears what’s the plan of action? Will the streets department have the city divided into quadrants so that debris removal is an orderly thing, or will there be certain thoroughfares that have priority?

Is there a plan to keep the sewage system operating, or at least the lift stations? How about the water plant? There won’t be electricity. Is there a fall back operations plan?

If the nursing homes decide to shelter-in-place is there a plan and the means to evacuate the residents should that plan fail? Are there means to resupply them in case it doesn’t fail?

What sort of identification criteria will be required to ensure that those who are here belong here?

Is there a shelter of last resort? Is it capable of withstanding 140 mile an hour winds? How will its location be communicated to those who should go to it (all those trailer parks again)?

This is by no means a complete disaster plan for a small city, it’s just the top of the list of things an emergency manager thinks about.

Although we like to think that our geography is our floodwall, it’s really not prudent to look to our history and say we have nothing to worry about since there hasn’t been serious, really serious damage to Zephyrhills for lo these many years.

It’s equally foolhardy to believe the cavalry will come galloping over the hill at the last moment. The Federal government has certainly proved it’s a very weak reed, and certainly not to be relied upon. The county emergency managers have a bunker in New Port Richie, 39 miles from here. It might be easy to rely on a timely county response, but it’s not realistic. The state folks are waay up there in Tallahassee. They won’t be along to help for quite a while, if ever.

Clearly, basic self reliance in a time of increased hurricane activity, not to mention terrorist attack, is the only prudent path.

What I don’t want to have to do is sometime down the road to have to print out this blog and stuff it in the face of Spina, Moore, Burgess, Barnes, Hartwig, Sellers as I stand in the middle of the rubble and ask them where they’ve been. I’ll have the same message for the councilpersons and the mayor just as soon as they show up.
Copyright Sept. 2005, Arjay Morgan All rights reserved.
Arjay