Tuesday, May 16, 2000

State hurricane drill to set course


HERALD STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS



TALLAHASSEE - Emergency officials will review evacuation routes, check shelter availability and figure out how to respond to worst-case scenarios this week during a statewide drill dubbed ''Hurricane Zorro.''

Officials hope the exercise will prevent a repeat of the chaotic evacuation during Hurricane Floyd last September when hundreds of thousands of people fled inland only to get stuck in massive traffic jams in north and central Florida.

''It is important to run through our reaction to a hurricane as an exercise before another season begins,'' Joe Myers, Florida's Emergency Management director, said Monday.

Four emergency managers from Manatee County government will participate in the drill.

"We will be exercising our emergency support function," said Laurie Feagans, the county's chief of emergency management in the Public Safety Department.

Through computer messages, the county's crew will practice receiving requests for help from the Florida Department of Community Affairs' division of emergency management and responding to the requests.

"The state might request us to be a host shelter facility, so we would simulate opening up shelters and determining how many people we could handle and getting hold of the Red Cross and requesting them to open shelters," Feagans said.

"We might also be asked to provide mutual aid, so we would go through the steps of assigning people by speciality to go to the affected area," she said.

Feagans said all she knows about the training scenario is that the mock hurricane does not strike Manatee County.

"We hope they never strike our side this year - real or not," she said.

The Atlantic hurricane season starts June 1 and runs through November 30. The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration has predicted there will be 11 tropical storms, seven of which would be hurricanes.

During Floyd, the biggest peacetime evacuation in Florida history left stranded an estimated 1.3 million people for hours on major highways such as Interstate 10, Interstate 75 and the Florida Turnpike.

To avoid similar problems this year, a study commission has suggested the state open up both sides of some roads during hurricane evacuations.

Officials began ''reverse laning'' exercises Monday on I-10 between Jacksonville and Monticello, near the Georgia border.

Seven roadways around the state are being looked at for reverse lane use. That includes I-10 east from Pensacola to Tallahassee, I-75 north bound from Charlotte County to I-275 in Tampa, and the turnpike from Fort Pierce to Orlando.

State officials said they don't want to rely too much on making roads one-way during their exercise this week.

Opening both sides of a road in the same direction could potentially put people in danger, if they are sitting in the middle of a storm on a clogged highway, Gov. Jeb Bush said.





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