When Hurricane Charley aimed for the west coast of Florida, residents in mobile home parks and low-lying areas were ordered to evacuate. Some found their way to public shelters, most of them school buildings.
According to accounts from evacuees, they received outstanding care at the shelters. They not only felt safe and well cared for, they even enjoyed their stays and made new friends. Some evacuees were moved to write letters to this newspaper or other media to thank those who took such good care of them as Charley approached.
Some shelters, especially those that catered to evacuees who had special needs because of handicaps or medical conditions, were staffed by nurses and volunteers from hospice. Their special skills were employed not only to take over care that was usually provided by home health aides or family members in the evacuees' homes, but also to calm people who were upset or confused by the evacuation.
However, the staff that greeted evacuees at most public school shelters were school employees: principals, assistant principals, teachers and maintenance and food service workers. These are people who on normal days would be greeting and taking care of the county's schoolchildren.
Few of these workers have any real experience with running public hurricane shelters. Most of them had only hours of warning that their schools would be used as shelters. Principals had to scramble to put together a staff to welcome and direct evacuees. Cafeteria managers had to gear up to serve three square meals and snacks each day the shelter was open.
In 1985 when Hurricane Elena hovered 80 to 100 miles off the coast of Pinellas County and a countywide evacuation was called late on a Friday night on a holiday weekend, schools were unprepared for the job of sheltering so many evacuees. There were widespread complaints that evacuees arrived to find shelters dark and locked or without staffing. Some schools had no food to serve and insufficient supplies of water. There were a few clashes between evacuees and shelter administrators, worsened by the tension that everyone felt over the first-time evacuation of the county.
This time, those problems did not arise. Shelter administrators might have had only a little warning that evacuees would soon arrive, but disaster rehearsals over the years since Hurricane Elena had provided structure to the emergency response. School buses arrived in an orderly fashion to pick up evacuees who live in institutions such as nursing homes. Evacuees arrived at schools where the lights were on, food was stockpiled and a calm and smiling staff awaited them.
The thanks now being offered to those who worked in the shelters are an indication of how well they performed their tasks. And the praise is especially appropriate when one remembers that the shelter workers were volunteers who had to leave their own homes and families to take care of others.
