TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Highlands Today

Tropical Storm Tested County's Response

Kathy Waters/Highlands Today

Highlands County Emergency Management Director Bill Nichols looks at the projected path of Tropical Storm Fay at a 5 p.m. briefing on Monday at the Highlands County Emergency Operations Center in Sebring.

ADVERTISEMENT

By DOUG CARMAN

Highlands Today

Published: August 24, 2008

SEBRING - Two emergency response officials called Tropical Storm Fay a "rehearsal" for Highlands County's efforts. The storm's winds were relatively mild, even though the rain was heavy enough to flood the southern and eastern areas of the county.

The so-called rehearsal was the county's third full-scale response to a tropical storm since the 2004 hurricane season. Before Hurricane Charley in 2004, Emergency Management Director Bill Nichols said that the last storm to directly hit the county was Hurricane Donna in 1960.

By Thursday, the Emergency Operations Center and the American Red Cross were still totaling the damages the local residents had from the storm. Arbuckle Creek still flowed under the trailers sitting in Neibert's Fishing Resort, several homes in Leisure Lakes were stranded on islands surrounded by the flood waters, and eight to 10 inches still inundated parts of the Kissimmee River Estates near the Highlands-Okeechobee county line.

The storm also indirectly claimed the life of one man who ran his generators inside his home and suffocated on the carbon monoxide.

Nichols and Art Harriman, the Highlands County Service Center director for the American Red Cross, said they believed their combined responses were sufficient despite the losses and lingering problems 48 hours after Fay left. Yet Nichols himself saw room to improve before the county faced another Fay, or another Charley or Jeanne.

The Calm Before the Storm

Before Fay struck, the National Hurricane Center projected sustained winds of up to 65 mph, and several county officials ran down a whole checklist. Should Sheriff Susan Benton make a reverse 911 call to the county? Should schools close down Tuesday? What about Wednesday? How are the sheriff deputies and EOC employees going to cover their 12-hour shifts?

Since the forecasts never predicted a major hurricane, no evacuations were even considered during the Sunday and Monday debriefings.

As Nichols predicted the storm to be nothing more than a "rain event" Sunday, Benton and County Engineer Ramon Gavarrete then brought up Toni Drive and the southeast shore of Lake Istokpoga, anticipating floods over there.

Before Tuesday, they decided to close the schools, stop garbage collection, open up seven shelters, double the size of the sheriff's patrol during the storm and set up a sand bag station in Sebring. Through their Web site and the local media, they announced that the shelters were open.

Even after the storm, Harriman of the Red Cross saw the shelters as something meant only to give people "peace of mind."

"A lot of the residents we had were seniors who got a little anxious," Harriman said. "If you live in mobile homes or low-lying areas I would get a little anxious too."

After Fay

It turned out, some people living along Arbuckle Creek, the Kissimmee River or in Leisure Lakes may have had reason to be anxious, even if some of them took it in stride.

Every updated prediction had the storm tracking further and further east, causing the wind predictions to drop and even leading the EOC to cut part of its support staff the morning that it made landfall.

In a Thursday interview, Nichols said he was surprised by how the storm continued from there. Once hitting land near Naples, Fay strengthened and slowed down.

"We felt the storm had deteriorated and wasn't going to live up to the expectations," Nichols said. Instead, it "increased back to what we originally forecast. We got about what we expected."

At least three places that were flooded by late Tuesday were not brought up in the earlier preparations. No major flooding was reported on the southern shores of Lake Istokpoga, yet the Kissimmee River and Arbuckle Creek overflowed while several flood complaints came from Leisure Lakes north of Lake June.

The three were all low-lying areas, and Arbuckle Creek flooded near U.S. 98 during the 2004 hurricanes.

When asked about the preparations made for Arbuckle Creek, Kissimmee River and the Leisure Lakes area, Nichols defended his decision not to make an evacuation order or to take any other measures in the three areas.

"We try to tell people, if you live in an inferior structure, if you live in a low-lying area, then come to the shelter," he said Thursday. "I don't know if this flooding has reached a life-threatening emergency type of deal... I just don't want to blow this out of proportion."

Meanwhile, Harriman at the Red Cross said they needed to assist only one family, which was displaced after a fire destroyed a home at 617 Serene Lane in Lorida owned by Allen B. Hench.

Beyond that, he said he checked up on Kissimmee River Estates after it flooded, but he was not expecting a lot of people to need the Red Cross's help for this storm.

"As the phone calls start coming in, we'll investigate what needs to be done," he said. If enough people did, he added, the national Red Cross would step in if the assistance would cost more than $5,000. Typically, a Red Cross assistance package for a family of four costs $1,500, and it includes temporary housing.

As he looked back on the emergency responses to Fay, Nichols did bring up one thing he thought the response effort needed the next time around aside from the common communication glitches during an emergency. He agreed with a county employee's suggestion that he should open a separate shelter for the county's employees and their families.

Nichols said he had to add new measures after each tropical storm since Hurricane Charley. He recalled how he started using portable restrooms after that storm, since the Highlands County Agri-Civic Center's main hall lacked any restrooms that didn't require people to walk outside to use. Currently, that hall has interior restrooms.

"We can always improve," Nichols said. "The day we stop improving is the day we're on the wrong side of the grass."

Note: Due to incorrect information provided to Highlands Today, an earlier version of this story contained an incorrect address for the house fire in Lorida and also misidentified the victims.

Doug Carman can be reached at 386-5838 or dcarman@highlandstoday.com

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT