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"A storm of similar proportions striking the Tampa Bay region would inflict massive destruction and human suffering, though on a far larger scale."
"Pinellas County is far more vulnerable than the rest of Tampa Bay."
"The people most at risk would be elderly or poor residents of Pinellas."
"Pinellas residents most likely to seek shelter from a storm ... are the ones with the poorest health and fewest choices for reaching safety - the elderly and the poor."
"Pinellas has nowhere near the number of public shelter spaces it needs."
"While most shelter operations try to provide about 20 square feet of space per person, Pinellas has plans to shrink that down to as small as 10 square feet."
If you think those quotes were plucked from the river of words written and spoken since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the northern gulf coast this year, you would be wrong.They come from a story in the St. Petersburg Times on Sept. 28, 1989.
That's 1989.
The story reported local emergency officials' comments days after Hurricane Hugo's 135 mph winds ravaged the Charleston, S.C., area. The story also reviewed the bad news from a 1988 study of how Pinellas would fare in a similar major storm.
As we wait this weekend to see what Hurricane Wilma's impact will be, can we say we have made progress in the past 17 years?
Pinellas County still doesn't have enough shelters. It still assigns only 10 square feet per evacuee to achieve its measly 70,000 shelter spaces. Governments in the Tampa Bay area are still trying to come up with a good system for identifying and evacuating poor and elderly people - 17 years after acknowledging that those would be the most vulnerable in a storm.
Certainly, there should have been more progress on those issues, but during the 1990s Tampa Bay seemed inoculated against the impact of powerful hurricanes, so it was easy for all of us to become complacent. Someday, we probably will be complacent again.
But not now. Not after seeing those stunning images of the suffering in Mississippi and Louisiana. People who live here are scared of storms now.
The emotional impact has been just as great on our government and civic leaders. That was apparent three weeks ago when a Regional Hurricane Forum was held in Pinellas Park.
At no time in recent memory had there been such a convocation of first responders, emergency planners and public policymakers from four Tampa Bay counties to discuss hurricane preparedness. The idea of holding such a forum originated with Pinellas County Administrator Steve Spratt, who was a county official in Miami-Dade when Hurricane Andrew struck, and who believes the Tampa Bay area could benefit from more regional cooperation on hurricane preparedness. Spratt asked the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council to host the forum.
A standing-room-only crowd of worried leaders from Pinellas, Pasco, Hillsborough and Manatee counties showed up, along with representatives from the Florida Legislature, the state departments of Transportation and Emergency Management, the military, hospitals, law enforcement, the American Red Cross, St. Petersburg College, the Tampa Port Authority, and city and county governments.
There wasn't the joking and back-slapping that typically would accompany such a gathering of leaders. These people were serious as they discussed such issues as speeding up evacuations, adding more public shelters, helping owners of older homes strengthen them against wind, getting supplies and assistance to survivors faster after a storm, managing the discomfort and impatience of evacuees in shelters, and improving communication with the public and among first responders.
The group listened attentively to Manatee County emergency management official Laurie Feagans, who went to Mississippi to help out after Hurricane Rita and brought back a new perspective on the need for preparedness. "It was God-awful. Hideous awful. I've never seen surge like that," said Feagans. While noting that Tampa Bay counties have much better emergency plans than what she saw in Mississippi, Feagans' story illustrated the enormous challenge of responding when a hurricane destroys most local emergency operation centers, rescue vehicles and communication links.
The forum provided an excellent opportunity to discuss these issues vital to the public's health and safety. But what happens now? As the forum closed, Spratt suggested that tasks be assigned and deadlines set, but no one responded. The Planning Council has since produced a long list of tasks, but there is no indication who will do them.
Florida is better prepared to deal with hurricanes than many other parts of the country - we've had more practice. And the governments in the Tampa Bay region do have plans and protocols and people and supplies in place that local governments in Louisiana and Mississippi and Charleston lacked.
However, because national experts have identified the Tampa Bay area as particularly vulnerable to a substantial loss of life in a major hurricane, we have to be the best here. The leaders who gathered at the hurricane forum ought to be following up, working together to tackle the issues they know very well could mean the difference between life and death.
Diane Steinle can be reached by e-mail at steinle@sptimes.com
WATCH THE FORUMThe Sept. 29 Regional Hurricane Forum can be viewed on streaming video by going to www.pinellascounty.org Click on Streaming Video, then on Regional Hurricane Forum on the left side of the screen.