Four days after Hurricane Charley hit Southwest Florida, Pasco economic officials went down with an offer to help. They returned with ideas.
The area's economic community had not fared well - spurring concern over how Pasco business centers would weather such a blow.
The scene in Charlotte County: "It was like driving down U.S. 19 and seeing every single business damaged," said Mary Jane Stanley, president of Pasco's Economic Development Council and chairwoman of the state's EDC.
In Pasco, such a disaster would impact the county's economy just as new companies are moving in, employment centers are developing and new businesses are seeing a boost from the influx of new homes and residents.
As of this summer, Pasco's occupational business licenses numbered more than 16,000.
And the property appraisers office puts the taxable value of a majority of Pasco's businesses at about $1.65-billion.
Should the county suffer a direct blow during this year's unusually active hurricane season, leaders expressed concern about the toll on Pasco's prosperity.
"Ultimately, if we get hit, the community as a whole will not be recovered until the businesses are recovered," said Michele Baker, Pasco's director of emergency management.
Of particular concern here is the potential fate of Pasco's industrial parks, which house the bulk of the county's 375 manufacturers.
"The winds are so high that when you have these metal buildings, they just get ripped to pieces," Stanley said.
In Charlotte County, "we haven't really been hearing about the business damaged (but) there are a lot of people out of work," she said.
Damage from Frances still is being assessed throughout the state and in Pasco, where flooding and power outages posed the greatest problems.
The concern about Pasco's business parks comes amid a major boom in the centers. Soon the county will have 23 industrial parks after hovering for years around 11. EDC leaders say the parks are key to bolstering the area's economy and its role as an employment center.
Yet even when Charley was headed toward Tampa Bay last month, some of the parks - which are occupied by individually owned businesses - made only minimal preparations.
"There was very little being done in the park at that time, a few taped up windows," said Al Fluman, spokesman for One Pasco Center in San Antonio, whose occupants include Withlacoochee Electric.
"Even the business owners were going home to prepare their houses, not their livelihoods," he said.
In Odessa at the West Pasco Industrial Park, 80 to 90 businesses are located at the 17-year-old park. However, hurricane preparedness rarely comes up, said Bill Weatherford, vice president of Marlin Commercial, which sells space in the park.
Instead, the individual businesses usually secure their own sites and insurance.
The park's leaders "meet once a year in association," Weatherford said, adding the discussion topics are typically security cameras or road improvements.
As for storms, "I don't know that we have an emergency preparedness plan," he said, adding, "There's nothing we can do other than keeping up with the code requirements."
Stanley with the EDC and Baker said they have been developing a plan to help all of the county's businesses.
"There's a couple things in place and there's a couple things in progress," said Baker, noting "after Hurricane Andrew, 8,000 mom-and-pops went out of business and never reopened."
The idea for Pasco is to quickly coordinate aid in a major storm's aftermath. That entails everything from assessing damage and handling insurance claims to setting up bridge loans, securing generators and providing any other aid that affected businesses require.
The efforts have taken on new timeliness with Florida's recent spate of storms.
Following the upheaval of Hurricane Charley and the flooding and power outages from Frances, Stanley said she and state officials now keep in regular contact to organize post-hurricane business plans.
"We've been learning the lessons from the first one," she said of Charley. "We have a statewide conference call every two days (detailing) what worked well and what didn't work."
Prior to the storms, Pasco's EDC mailed hundreds of "Florida Disaster Survival Kit" CD-ROMs to Pasco manufacturers. Developed by the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, the kits can also be ordered online at www.fldisasterkit.com
Among some key tips:
Have duplicate copies of your records off-site in case a second office must be set up. Also, have alternate phone, cell or pager numbers for key employees in case lines are down.
"The fact of the matter is you just don't know what's going to happen. You can't be 100 percent prepared," Stanley said. "But you can at least make some provisions."
Melia Bowie covers business in Pasco County. She can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6229, or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6229. Her e-mail address is bowie@sptimes.com
