The presence of Hurricane Laura and what’s left of the tropical system named Marco is reminding the Gulf coast that hurricane season is barely half over. With visitors still crowding reopened beaches, emergency management officials spent much of the week tracking two systems in the Gulf of Mexico. Storms happen every year, but 2020 is the first time that officials are having to plan how to evacuate and shelter what could be hundreds of thousands of people during a pandemic. The 2020 hurricane season was not predicted to be normal. At the start, predictions called for an extremely active season. That doesn’t take other COVID-19 into account when it comes to evacuation, training and recovery. And that was before two named storms both moved toward the central Gulf Coast.
“We’re trying to react to that. With the COVID thing, that doesn’t help,” said Jeff Collier. He’s mayor of Dauphin Island. Collier says hurricane preparations are a familiar routine for their coastal town, but the coronavirus adds a new twist.
“Well, it just adds another level of complications, again, all the COVID procedures we try to maintain those, but at the same time, you’ve got to be mindful of everything. Normally, you could just focus on storm protection, but this time, while you’re doing storm preparations, you have to keep in mind the protocols from COVID, so it just complicates the situation even further than what would be normal,” he contended.
“We will be monitoring the situation,” said Zach Hood, Baldwin County’s EMA director.
“We will be here in Robertsdale at the Emergency Operations Center and that will continue for the duration of the event,” he said. What’s important is that we communicate with the public not only the forecast, but what the public needs to do in response to the storms and the situation with coronavirus in our community. So, yes, we’re dealing with COVID-19 still. We will continue to deal with that, but now we have two storms in the Gulf of Mexico that we have to pay very close attention to. Local and federal officials have been working on how to deal with hurricanes during a pandemic since before the season began."
“This is a different year,” said Congressman Bradley Byrne.
His district includes Mobile and Baldwin County.
“So one of the things that we have to be thinking about is as we respond to a storm, how do we protect the people that are responding as first responders?” asked Byrne.
“Those men you just saw in there. How do we protect them and the people who work with them? How do we know when we’ve got somebody that we’re trying to help that has or is likely to have the disease? What do we do with somebody like that if we have to evacuate? There’s been a lot of thought and money put into making sure that we have the appropriate response to make sure that protects and takes care of everybody,” said Byrne.
Planning is more essential in a pandemic. That goes for residents as well as officials.
“If you look at August, September, October and November, we know historically that these are very active months for hurricanes, whether it’s the Atlantic Basin or the Gulf of Mexico,” said Zach Hood.
“What we had planned for is if we had a storm in the Gulf of Mexico is how to run our shelters in a way that is safe for individuals that are needing to have a place to go for the storm?” Hood conjectured.
“What we are promoting and this has not changed, we promoted this since Day 1 is the shelters are shelters of last resort, meaning they’re not going to open immediately, that they will open a little later.”
COVID-19 precautions will affect shelter operations. Hood says temperatures will be checked and other efforts will be in place against the spread of the virus.
“We have implemented that you’re familiar with. You will be screened before you come into the shelter,” said Hood. “There will be items for disinfecting, sanitizing and then also, you may that we necessarily are not using the cots that you are familiar with. It may be in terms more of a mat that lays flat that we can wipe down and disinfect as needed. I do want to remind you that a shelter is not a five-star hotel. It’s not going to be any nice accommodation. It’s certainly going to be safe and there will be space between you and others. However, it’s not going to be the most comfortable situation especially being that we are going to require masks. We are going to require constant temperature checks and you will have requirements and responsibilities while you are sheltered to ensure that we do the best we can to protect everyone in the shelter.”
Planning is always important in preparing for hurricanes, but COVID-19 makes that even more of an issue. Hood says do not make plans based on predictions of a small storm.
“Social distancing will affect our shelter, but, again, I want to remind everyone that we can predict what kind of numbers we may or may not have in a shelter, but when it comes to it, that storm, and often we see increase in intensity,” said Hood.
“These storms, they get close to the coast and they actually will intensify before they make landfall and individuals that at one point in time may have stayed, they get scared or panic or maybe their roof has compromised and now they’re looking for a place to stay, we’ve got to make sure that we have a way to get them into a safe place and we will do everything we can to be sure we can accommodate that,” he suggested.
Hood says one important precaution is to keep in touch with local emergency management, whether it’s on a website, app or other connection.
“If you will make sure that you are dialed into your local EMA regardless of whether you’re in Baldwin County, Mobile County or north of here. Jefferson County, wherever you may be, know your emergency management agency, know what they do, and know how they distribute information and that will be your most credible source for reliable information in a time of disaster,” Hood suggested.
COVID-19 has also required changes in training and communications during this storm season. Jenni Guerry is Baldwin EMA deputy director.
“So, we’ve had to get very creative this year considering the situation with COVID-19,” he said.
“We have, within our operations center looked at ways in which we could expand our virtual presence, expand our social media presence and we’ve been working to help create some additional public service announcements in the way of videos and really trying to fill some content for our YouTube channels, our Facebook channels, our website. So, we’re working very closely with many of our partners that are around the jurisdictions in the cities as well as our tourism industry trying to reach a broader audiences, particularly since we want to make sure that we’re also abiding by social distancing and all those preventative measures to help slow the spread of the COVID-19 in our community,” said Guerry.
Congressman Byrne says federal and local emergency officials have been working since before the hurricane season began to prepare for dealing with storms and the pandemic.
“We were at that time, obviously getting ready for hurricane season and it was clear to me that there was a lot of thought being put into it,” said Byrne.
“But now, in the last two months, I guess about three months now, I’ve had the opportunity to see how they matured it. So here we are at the peak of the hurricane season and I think they’re in a pretty good spot.”
Byrne said that no matter what happens, plans are in place on the Alabama Gulf Coast.
“Nobody wants a hurricane coming. I hope this is all a whole lot of preparation work for nothing, but at least it’s comforting to know that if one does come here, it’s been thought out. They have the resources. They know what they need to do and they’re prepared to do it,” he said.
An Alabama Public Radio news feature, which is part of APR effort to address the "news desert" along the state's Gulf coast. APR recruited and trained veteran print journalists in Mobile and Baldwin counties to join our news team to do radio stories from along the Gulf coast.
