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Letter to the editor

Survived a hurricane? Tell county your story

By A TIMES EDITORIAL
Published October 14, 2007

It's October, and Pinellas County government is collecting horror stories. If you have survived the terror of a hurricane, Pinellas wants to hear the details. Then officials want to use your story to scare others.

Sound weird? It is all to good purpose. County government may have hit on a way to convince people that they need to act to save their own lives and property when a hurricane or flood threatens.

Pinellas emergency management officials have been frustrated that so many people say they will just stay home when a hurricane threatens, even if their home is in an evacuation area or not substantial enough to stand up to high winds. Surveys continue to show that a significant number of people say they will not take refuge in the sturdy home of a friend or relative on higher ground, will not go to a public shelter and will not evacuate from the county.

And past experience has demonstrated that many Pinellas residents also will do little or nothing to harden their homes against the threat.

With lives potentially at stake when - not if - the county is threatened by a hurricane, the Pinellas Emergency Management Department came up with a truly creative idea: Project Storm Story. The department is asking Pinellas residents to submit stories and even photographs about their own experiences in hurricanes or tropical storms anywhere in the world.

The county will use the testimonials on the county television station, Channel 18, and in educational materials.

Anyone who wants to submit a story may mail it to Project Storm Story, 333 Chestnut St., Clearwater, FL 33756. Or you may e-mail it to tiovino@pinellascounty.org or fax it to 727 464-4432. You must include your name, phone number and address.

Officials hope these true stories will be so vivid that people who have never experienced a hurricane will hear them and think, "Oh, is that how it is? I'd better think differently about this next time."

The county's thinking is that if people won't learn from the warnings that local government has provided through the years, maybe they will take to heart the stories of their neighbors - people like Janet Donegan of Clearwater, whose daughter and son-in-law lost their home to Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and whose elderly parents drowned in a flood in Texas.

County officials deserve a pat on the back for a creative idea that may get through to stubborn residents who not only risk their own lives by ignoring the dangers, but also put at risk the lives of emergency responders.

[Last modified October 13, 2007, 20:35:40]