By HOWARD TROXLER, Times Columnist
Published September 4, 2005
By the end of the week, a mixture of gloom and frustration had settled in around here. Many of us watched the chaos in New Orleans and asked: Is this really as good as things in America can work?
But that was only half the feeling. Seeing a great city devastated by the thing we Floridians fear above all else slapped us in the face with our own helplessness. The emotion goes beyond survivor guilt: It is more akin to survivor despair.
Nothing protects us from this. We survive here entirely at the whim and indulgence of Nature, and Nature seems to be getting into a lousy mood.
It could still be us, two weeks from now. Or two months. Or never.
"Never" used to seem like a better bet than it has lately. When I moved to Florida more than two decades ago, I was struck by the cheerful self-indulgence with which folks approached hurricanes.
Few people actually bothered to evacuate. If anything, it was a chance to hold a party. Neighbors liked to talk about how they had lived here for 20 years, or 40 years, or whatever, without trouble.
As recently as Georges in 1998, which for the longest time looked like a bowling ball curving right into Tampa Bay's pocket, I remember being the only person in my neighborhood to put the furniture up on blocks, pack the cooler, take the cats and head for high ground. Some of my neighbors made fun of me when I came home.
But the experiences of 20 years of living here don't mean anything anymore, nor 30 years, nor 50. What matters is exactly what Tampa Bay is prepared to do after a storm surge akin to that of Katrina.
Are we in Tampa Bay any better prepared than New Orleans?
I asked this of Gary Vickers, who is emergency management director in Pinellas County. Understandably, he didn't want to make a direct comparison.
As our reporters Will Van Sant and Kevin Graham wrote, the biggest difference between hurricane scenarios in Tampa Bay and New Orleans is that we aren't living below sea level.
That means even the biggest storm surge will drain away in 6 to 12 hours, once the power behind the surge has moved on.
Of course, our cities and homes might well be flattened. The barrier islands might be scrubbed clean. But there would be no long-term, widespread standing water.
Vickers described the post-storm scenario: As soon as the winds receded to 40 mph, law enforcement, fire rescue and utility trucks would be out scouring the county in search and rescue operations.
Water and sewer systems would be offline after any flood, but the plans are to get them back up as soon as possible, possibly with interim boil-water orders. In the meantime, plans exist for truckloads of potable water, bagged ice and military MREs, or meals-ready-to-eat, to be standing by. The distribution points are already mapped out.
The National Guard would be called up if the storm were judged serious enough. Every law enforcement agency would be on the street. In an emergency declaration, the county could set a curfew and restrict the sales of guns, ammunition and alcohol.
So the plan contemplates a lot of the precise problems that have existed in New Orleans.
One wants desperately to have faith in it. And yet, what would emergency officials of New Orleans have said, if asked the same kind of questions a month ago? The events of this week leave us with a deep disappointment and distrust, in exactly the same way we felt let down when we learned about the intelligence failures that led to Sept. 11, 2001.
I asked Vickers a final question: Is there any warning in Florida that we have repeatedly ignored, just as repeated warnings about New Orleans' levees were foolishly ignored over the years?
He answered, absolutely yes. We do have our own version of New Orleans' levee warnings.
Here it is: Know your evacuation level - and evacuate. Don't say, "Aw, heck, it ain't gonna come here," or, "I've lived here 40 years." Ultimately that is a selfish and pigheaded act, because it means somebody might have to come dig you out instead of helping somebody else. Assuming they ever find you at all.
