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Emergency Managers Say Storm Surge is Biggest Threat

chapstickaddict via Flickr Creative Commons

With the onset of this year’s Atlantic Hurricane Season last week, many residents worry about the potential of damaging storm winds, but emergency management experts say the greatest threat from hurricanes is storm surge.  Storm surge is the abnormal rise of water above normal tide levels that can accompany a hurricane. 

“Storm surge is a huge killer in hurricanes and wind does seem to get the TV and media coverage because it’s impressive to see,” said Lee County Emergency Management Planning Chief Gerald Campbell.  “But storm surge is the thing that as emergency managers, we worry about.”

Storm surge and not storm intensity is the primary concern for emergency managers when considering evacuation scenarios. Campbell urges residents not to be lulled into complacency even if they don’t live directly along the coast.  “The challenge is that people believe that they live a long ways from the water, whatever that means to them,” said Campbell.  “What I tell people is that when the beach comes to your house though, a lot of times it only takes a couple feet of water to do that. In Lee County our elevations are consistently 12 to 14 feet.  And a significant hurricane can easily push that much water.”

In Charlotte County, that elevation is slightly lower at eight to 12 feet with some residents living at elevations of six feet.  “There’s no place other than New Orleans that’s lower than that for the entire county population,” said Charlotte County Emergency Management Director Wayne Sallade.  “You couple that with the highest median age population in America and the highest percentage of a county population over the age of 65 and they’ve all come from someplace else, you’ve got a catastrophe waiting to happen.”

Color-coded maps are now being used uniformly across Florida counties to indicate the potential risk of storm surge.  Emergency managers urge residents to consult the map of their area to better understand their risk in the event of a storm and to know when then may need to evacuate.  Hurricane preparation guides with elevation maps are available at most large retail outlets and online at: http://www.floridadisaster.org/publicmapping/