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What to do if a big one hits?

It has been decades since Citrus felt the full force of a storm. Here's how we can prepare.

By BARBARA BEHRENDT and CATHERINE E. SHOICHET
Published September 25, 2005

LECANTO - Live television images of the reflooding of New Orleans played behind sheriff's Capt. Joe Eckstein as he spoke from his office on Friday. At the same time, pictures of the devastation in Hancock County, Miss., flashed across his computer screen.

As director of Citrus County's Emergency Operations Center, Eckstein has been watching the events of the past several weeks unfold in hope that the damage wrought by Katrina, and now Rita, can teach valuable lessons that will help him do his job better.

But he wants the citizens of Citrus County to learn a lesson, too.

"We live on the Gulf Coast," he said. "This can happen."

Not only can it happen, but some hurricane experts have said that the Tampa Bay area is overdue for a strong storm.

So is Citrus ready to weather such an event?

"If it were a Category 1 or Category 2, we have enough resources. We can handle that," Eckstein said, referring to the strength levels or hurricanes which run from a 1 to a 5. "A 3, 4 or 5, we have plans in place if we have a perfect scenario."

The county has evacuation plans and shelters; it regularly drills for disaster and nuclear emergencies; and it has an education program to teach residents how to make their own emergency plan. On Eckstein's desk was a thick study showing graphically just how bad things can get here.

In a Category 2 hurricane, Crystal River City Hall would be completely submerged by storm surge. In a Category 4, so would Seven Rivers Regional Medical Center. In a Category 5, another map shows that water would engulf the entire west side of the county as far east as Meadowcrest and Rock Crusher Road.

At a meeting of the sheriff's Citizens' Academy last week, Eckstein asked participants if they thought they had endured hurricanes last year. Plenty of hands shot up. Then he informed them that only one small portion of the county, the southeastern tip , felt the tiniest bit of hurricane-force winds from one of last year's storms.

And it has been decades since Citrus has felt the full brunt of a hurricane.

"Last year was a great dress rehearsal for Citrus County," Eckstein said. "This year is a great dress rehearsal for Citrus County."

Even though Katrina didn't hit here, sheriff's Lt. Bob Wesch saw the damage firsthand. Earlier this month, Wesch, who is the assistant manager of Citrus County's Emergency Operations Center, went to Hancock County as part of a Tampa Bay area incident management team.

One image made the whole trip worthwhile.

An older woman who Wesch guessed was in her mid 80s was sitting in front of a shelter in Bay St. Louis when Wesch and others came by. He asked if she was okay and she responded in full Mississippi style.

"She said, "Honey, the good Lord got me through Katrina and everything else is icing on the cake,"' Wesch recalled.

His work in the area was through the Emergency Operations Center set up there, helping coordinate rescue and relief efforts. The biggest obstacle, he said, was dealing with local turf wars between fire and law enforcement agencies.

"Slowly but surely, they started talking," he said. And the resources from government and military relief agencies poured in.

When he wasn't helping coordinate emergency operations, Wesch drove around with a pickup truck full of supplies, delivering them to people in the coastal towns of Waveland, Bay St. Louis and Pearlington.

"Along the water, there's nothing left," he said.

Where stilt houses once stood, he saw cement staircases leading nowhere.

He took pictures of piles of debris and tipped-over trucks, but there was one image he saw that he didn't capture with his camera: family after family sifting through the rubble, trying to salvage pieces of the lives they once had.

That was too personal.

This could be home.

If a hurricane like Katrina hit Citrus, he said, "everything west of U.S. 19, and probably 4 miles east of U.S. 19, would be totally destroyed."

In recent days, Eckstein has seen the same stark images as everyone else: the Superdome overloaded and undersupplied, the school buses under water, the people in wheelchairs sitting out in the baking sun waiting for rescue, the workers pulling dead bodies from hospitals and nursing homes.

He believes Citrus already has plans to deal with many such issues. He can't say, at this point, whether those plans are any better than the ones that probably existed in New Orleans. Plans are plans. Reality is never the same scenario.

In a strong storm, Eckstein said, there should be no "shelter of last resort" as the Superdome was named. Instead, he would encourage people to get out of the community entirely. In lesser storms there are shelters such as Forest Ridge Elementary School and the cafeteria at Citrus High School. But Forest Ridge has no all-encompassing generator and Citrus High has no generator at all.

When the new Renaissance Center now under construction at the Lecanto school complex is completed, then there will be a hurricane shelter for special needs residents, he said.

Still, emergency managers want to see residents strongly try to find nonshelter safe places where they can go to friends or relatives out of harm's way.

Eckstein also said there will be no parking lots full of buses submerged in water as was seen in New Orleans. Citrus County school buses and public transit buses will be used to transport residents and then pulled into a place where they are safe.

He can't promise that the images of traffic jams leaving New Orleans weeks ago and Houston days ago won't be repeated. Any storm to hit the area will hit several counties, affecting many people. The critical issue is that people heed the specific instructions from emergency managers.

"It's our job to convince the people to do what we tell them to do," Eckstein said.

The evacuation plan is set up in zones based on the size and direction of the storm. As the emergency managers in the region communicate about an approaching hurricane, they make decisions about who needs to go where and even when roads should be converted into one-way streets out of harm's way.

Citrus County already tries to keep track of where the most vulnerable special needs patients are in the community. People can call the Emergency Operations Center to be put on that list. If they use a cell phone as their main phone or have an unlisted number, they also need to be in touch with the EOC so that their number can be placed on Code Red, a reverse 911 system which can send a recorded message out to 60,000 people in just one hour.

But people must take the initiative to get on the lists.

"It boils down to that people have to take responsibility for being safe, for taking care of themselves," Eckstein said.

One lesson Eckstein said might be taken from Katrina is that some people did not want to evacuate because they did not want to leave their pets. He said it might be worth investigating whether Citrus should go the way of other places and create some shelter that would accept pets as well as people.

County Commission Chairwoman Vicki Phillips said that idea was worth exploring. When Rita threatened Key West, pets went with people provided the pets were in cages and had all the licenses and medical information.

Eckstein said if taking people along with their dog would get them to a safe place, that might be a change worth making.

Nursing homes, adult care facilities and hospitals have their own evacuation plan, and Eckstein said he hopes all would heed a mandatory evacuation. While the legality of arresting people for not evacuating has been an issue in New Orleans, Eckstein said if he were faced with a situation where someone was putting people at risk by keeping them in the path of the storm, he would not hesitate to arrest them.

"It's a judgment call," Eckstein said. "The bottom line is we don't want to lose any lives."

Wesch agreed.

"I'd much rather be sued for false arrest than lose 80 or 90 people," he said.

The best way for the county to prepare for a hurricane is to buy equipment and save money in advance, according to Eckstein.

"This county needs to open their eyes a little. This county needs to sink some money into this," Eckstein said.

That's what county Commissioners Dennis Damato and Jim Fowler had in mind at a Sept. 15 budget hearing. They said the county should put aside $1-million from this year's $3.3-million budget reserve for a storm relief fund.

"We need to take a lesson from Katrina," Fowler said. "We are a coastal county and we are very vulnerable."

If Katrina had hit the Panhandle, he said, Citrus County would be Biloxi.

But the commission ultimately voted 3-2 to return all of the surplus money to taxpayers in the form of a lower millage rate.

Eckstein said that was a mistake.

"There's a lot of resources that we need that we don't have," he said.

Those might include facilities to supply water or refrigeration since Eckstein said he knows it could be days before federal officials make it to Citrus County after an emergency.

"We need a bigger EOC," Eckstein said. As Wesch discovered during his trip to Mississippi, it is nearly impossible to coordinate efforts after a major disaster when the hub of communications has blown away or is not adequate to handle the need.

When the EOC was was constructed in 1987, the subterranean communications center was on the cutting edge. But that was then, Eckstein said, and this is now.

"It's time to get something else state of the art," he said.

The facilities are outdated. The sewer backs up. It's too small. Trees surround the building. And if a Category 5 storm hits, Eckstein said, the walls will probably cave in.

"I don't feel comfortable in it," he said. "I didn't feel comfortable last season."

Plans for a new Emergency Operations Center are under way.

Phillips said the County Commission has approved a site for the center off Sovereign Path in Lecanto, and staffers are working to select an architect.

Officials hope construction will be complete before the next hurricane season starts.

Phillips said there are two things that people should have learned from Katrina.

The first is that they should evacuate if told to evacuate.

The second is that "emergency preparedness works from the local level on up," she said.

Key to that local effort is the ability to communicate well between agencies within the county and from county to county, county to state officials and to federal officials through communication plans already in place. Officials said they are confident in their communication plan.

If a hurricane hits Citrus County, the Sheriff's Office will take the lead, overseeing the Emergency Operations Center and heading up evacuation efforts. They also coordinate among all the agencies that play a role before, during and after a hurricane.

In August, Phillips wrote a memo questioning that chain of command. While the County Commission can delegate responsibilities of emergency management, she said, Florida law holds the commission responsible for oversight, liability and accountability. If the county is ultimately responsible, shouldn't the county also be in control, Phillips has asked.

Eckstein said he thought the county would appreciate a buffer in that responsibility by having the sheriff in charge.

"Do they want to accept 100 percent of the responsibility?" he said. "This is a stressful job."

The County Commission has not discussed that issue since it came up at a goal-setting session in February.

Regardless, in a disaster, county and sheriff's officials say they will put turf wars aside to work together and help Citrus County residents.

How that spirit of cooperation will work with other authorities is another unknown. Some in Louisiana and Mississippi have complained that once the Federal Emergency Management Agency arrived on the scene, they stepped in and took control and that some problems resulted from that.

But local emergency managers say they have a leg up on that problem from an unlikely source: the Progress Energy nuclear power plant north of Crystal River. Because of it and the scrutiny FEMA places on such facilities and emergency planning around such facilities, Citrus people know FEMA people on a first-name basis.

"I have enough confidence that when FEMA gets here they are going to see how organized we are and say, "what do you want us to do' and then we will all work together," Eckstein said. "I'm not sure that happened up there" in Louisiana.

Phillips and Eckstein agree that the key issue if a major storm threatens the area is for people to implement their own plan to be safe and to get out of the way of the storm long before it comes.

"If you choose to stay," Phillips said, "there's going to come a point in time where you need us and we won't be able to come to you."

Barbara Behrendt can be reached at 564-3621 or behrendt@sptimes.com Catherine Shoichet can be reached at 860-7309 or cshoichet@sptimes.com

[Last modified September 25, 2005, 02:15:40]