SRIA Manager attends Hurricane Conference

Local and national emergency responders converged in Orlando for the National Hurricane Conference last week.

Santa Rosa Island Authority Manager Buck Lee attended the seminar which had speakers such as Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center; Michael Chertoff, head of the Department of Homeland Security; Vice Admiral Thad Allen, U.S. Coast Guard, David Paulison, acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Administration.

Lee said the people at the conference discussed changing the way hurricanes are forecast.

"I've been an advocate for many years to get rid of that Saffir-Simpson scale," Lee said, referring to the intensity scale by which hurricanes are measured.

"Let's say you have a Cat 5 hurricane, then people say, 'oh great, it made landfall and dropped down to a Cat 2.' What they don't understand is there is still a Cat 5 wall of water coming at you," Lee said, adding that Dr. Steve Lyons of the Weather Channel agrees.

Lee said he checked the wave height of the Gulf buoys four hours before Hurricane Ivan and discovered that wave heights were averaging 54 feet. The following year, he checked the buoys before Hurricane Dennis and learned that waves were averaging 34 feet.

"I knew we weren't going to get the same storm surge we had with Ivan," Lee said.

National weather forecasters are planning to show the probability cone extending inland to prepare cities such as Montgomery for category one winds, if necessary.

Lee said many people who weren't flooded during Ivan may have a false sense of security.

"That's what people thought about Camille," Lee said of those along the Gulf Coast.

He advocates anyone living in a mobile home or flood zone to "move out at combat speed," a term he learned in the military means "twice as fast as hauling a--."

May 21-27 is Hurricane Preparedness Week, but Lee suggests the local residents stock up now on gas, water and dry goods to last four to seven days.

The local responders will practice the National Incident Management System (NIMS), this month to further prepare for the potential of a tropical storm.