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Preparing for hurricanes a shared responsibility

If a major hurricane hit Pasco County's coast, emergency managers don't know how many needy or elderly people would call for help or even where they would put them if everyone left their homes as instructed.

It is one of the problems facing Pasco and other counties reviewing emergency management plans in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The staggering numbers reported Sunday by St. Petersburg Times staff writers Bridget Hall Grumet and Garrett Therolf caught the attention of state Sen. Mike Fasano and Gov. Jeb Bush as part of a discussion of funding new hurricane shelters.

In a Category 5 hurricane, more than 237,000 people would need to evacuate an area of west Pasco stretching from the coast to Little Road. More than 4,000 patients in hospitals, nursing homes and adult living facilities would need to move, and nearly 62,000 people would go to Pasco shelters, which have space for less than half of them.

Fasano asked the governor to reconsider his veto of $565,000 for a special-needs shelter for Zephyrhills - money tucked into the state spending plan late in the legislative budget process. Bush plans no such legislative free-for-all for hurricane-shelter money in the coming year and indicated he plans a statewide initiative to build more shelters with local governments expected to match half the cost. We don't blame Fasano for looking out for his own constituents, but the governor is correct to do more than piecemeal planning.

To the county's credit, it already charges a hurricane impact fee to help retrofit existing public buildings into hurricane-ready shelters and to pay for some minor road improvements tied to evacuations. But as with any impact fee, the costs can be assessed only on new construction and cannot be used to finance a current shelter shortage.

The expected shelter shortfall is well documented. That is why the county urges residents to evacuate locally. In other words, west Pasco residents should plan to stay with friends in central and east Pasco. That also would help curb road congestion. An evacuation of Pasco County's flood zones is projected to take 16 hours to complete. It would take a day and a half under the likely scenario Pasco evacuated at the same time as Pinellas and Hillsborough counties.

But exactly how many people will need help evacuating is unknown. The county estimates 174,000 people are considered transportation disadvantaged - a figure inflated by its very definition. Every member of a low-income household and nearly every person 65 or older is considered disadvantaged, regardless of their access to a vehicle.

Don't expect 44 percent of the county to be calling for a ride, considering the Pasco Tax Collector's Office processed 245,000 passenger vehicle registrations last year. That's not counting leased vehicles, trucks, recreational vehicles and motorcycles in this county of 390,000 people.

We suspect the number of special-needs cases is significantly less. Close to 11,000 households don't have a car in Pasco, according to U.S. Census data. Almost 8,000 people are registered with the county for its coordinated transportation system providing rides to locations and at times different from the county's regularly scheduled bus runs. That is the audience the county needs to reach because only 2,086 so-called special-needs residents have registered with Pasco for assistance during an evacuation.

Because the county knows of at least 8,000 individuals without reliable transportation, it would be wise to contact those in west Pasco flood zones to determine if their evacuation plans include relying on the county for a ride during an emergency.

The onus, however, must be shared. It is better for the elderly and infirm who will need transportation to make those arrangements now, instead of waiting until forecasters predict a storm is about to hit.

[Last modified October 6, 2005, 01:14:18]