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Simple Tips To Stay Safe This Hurricane Season · Inside West Palm Beach

10:27:42
I'm Jerry Marcello. Welcome to the City
10:27:44
Center podcast from West
10:27:46
Palm Beach, Florida. Hurricane
10:27:47
season is here. What do you need to do to
10:27:50
prepare? How can you stay safe and how do
10:27:53
you protect your family? We'll talk about
10:27:55
it next on the City
10:27:56
Center podcast from West
10:27:57
Palm Beach. And joining me today is Brent
10:28:04
Bloomfield, assistant fire
10:28:05
chief for the City of West
10:28:06
Palm Beach. Brent,
10:28:07
thank you for joining us.
10:28:08
Thank you for having me. We talked about
10:28:10
this before many,
10:28:11
many times, but it always
10:28:12
bears repeating. Preparation is the key
10:28:15
to surviving a storm.
10:28:17
What does that entail?
10:28:18
What does it do? What should people here
10:28:20
locally be thinking
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about? I think the number one
10:28:23
thing is knowing the hurricane season. It
10:28:25
starts on June 1st. It
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runs through November
10:28:27
30th. And what we've seen is in the last
10:28:30
few years, we've seen
10:28:31
these hurricane seasons
10:28:32
just get more and more devastating. We're
10:28:35
starting to see a change
10:28:36
in how these hurricanes
10:28:37
are ramping up, rapid intensification. So
10:28:39
with that being said,
10:28:41
you want to make sure
10:28:42
that you're prepared for the worst case
10:28:43
scenario. What is worst
10:28:44
case scenario? Well, worst case
10:28:45
scenario is we have a cat fight like
10:28:47
Dorian bearing down on
10:28:48
us, but it doesn't make that
10:28:49
turn. It comes right across us, like a
10:28:52
hurricane, Andrew, or on the
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West Coast, we've seen Michael
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and we've seen Ian and we see, I mean, a
10:28:57
ton of different
10:28:57
storms. So the preparation is
10:29:01
very simple. Make sure that your house is
10:29:03
in order. Number one, inside and outside,
10:29:06
make sure that the trees are trimmed,
10:29:07
make sure that
10:29:07
everything that can be picked up
10:29:09
is picked up. Then things that are easily
10:29:11
moved, make sure you
10:29:12
have somewhere to take
10:29:13
them whenever a storm comes inside the
10:29:15
house. Make sure that
10:29:16
you have plenty of food and
10:29:17
water for the event. Start that now, not
10:29:20
two days before the
10:29:21
storm. You get perishable
10:29:22
food items that you'll eat later, water
10:29:24
that you're going to
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drink later. You can always
10:29:26
drink it later. You can always eat
10:29:27
perishable food later. You
10:29:29
know, things like peanut butter,
10:29:30
and jelly, things like canned foods,
10:29:34
canned meat, like tuna,
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those are always good things.
10:29:37
Make sure that your medication is up to
10:29:39
date and you can run it
10:29:41
through for, if you have
10:29:42
to get a 90 day supply, get a 90 day
10:29:44
supply if that can run
10:29:45
you through. Make sure if
10:29:45
we have a storm that's going to be coming
10:29:47
that you don't wait
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till the day before to
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fill those prescriptions. Make sure you
10:29:50
get them done early. Make
10:29:52
sure that all your paperwork
10:29:53
is in order, especially your insurance
10:29:55
paperwork. Make sure that's in a
10:29:57
watertight bag, easy
10:29:59
to get to, because once the storm clears,
10:30:02
you know, and you
10:30:02
start to, you know, we're
10:30:04
out of the phase of the 72 hours where
10:30:06
we're in a phase of we're
10:30:07
responding, we're trying
10:30:08
to save people, then the recovery starts,
10:30:11
right? So the recovery
10:30:12
part for you as a citizen
10:30:13
is you want to make sure that you get a
10:30:15
hold of your insurance
10:30:16
company if you have any
10:30:17
damage and you want to make sure that
10:30:18
your paperwork's in
10:30:19
order. So it's an easy, easy
10:30:21
transition for you.
10:30:22
I think a lot of people make the mistake
10:30:23
or they get the mental
10:30:24
idea that, "Oh, I'll just
10:30:26
call it up on my phone or I'll be on my
10:30:28
PC." We might not have power
10:30:30
for a long time afterwards.
10:30:31
Well, we may not have power or signal. So
10:30:33
that was one of the
10:30:34
things that we ran into
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in Hurricane Michael when we were in the
10:30:37
Panhandle. We had a 20
10:30:38
mile area that was, there was
10:30:40
no signal at all. When you have no
10:30:42
signal, that means you have no
10:30:43
communication. So you
10:30:44
think that you're going to just be able
10:30:45
to pull these things
10:30:46
up on your phone because
10:30:46
that's what we're used to, right? You
10:30:48
know, 20 years ago,
10:30:50
everything was hard paper. You
10:30:52
had everything in folders, that kind of
10:30:53
stuff. Now everything is
10:30:55
kept, all your files are
10:30:56
in your computer or they're on your
10:30:57
phone. And you may have
10:30:59
power for a certain amount
10:31:00
of time on those devices, but eventually
10:31:03
it's going to run out.
10:31:04
And if you don't have a
10:31:05
way to reenergize them or back them up,
10:31:09
you're not going to be
10:31:09
able to get that information.
10:31:11
So this is something that you want to
10:31:12
make sure that your hard
10:31:13
copies are in some type
10:31:14
of water sealed. Big Ziploc bags, always
10:31:17
good. You can,
10:31:18
especially the ones that have the
10:31:19
double seal on them, those usually hold
10:31:21
up pretty well. And
10:31:22
then just make sure that
10:31:23
you're keeping those in a safe place.
10:31:25
So as we're approaching hurricane season,
10:31:28
one of the things that
10:31:28
we're going to be doing,
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as you just mentioned, is stockpiling
10:31:32
supplies for a certain
10:31:34
amount of time during and after
10:31:36
a storm so that members of your family
10:31:37
have proper food, have
10:31:39
proper water. What about
10:31:40
pets?
10:31:41
Yeah, same thing with pets. You want to
10:31:42
make sure that you, same
10:31:43
thing with them, right?
10:31:44
You want to make sure their medication is
10:31:45
up to date. They take
10:31:46
medication and you have
10:31:47
it to run through like a 90 day. And then
10:31:49
of course, food, make
10:31:50
sure you have plenty
10:31:50
of food leading into hurricane season. I
10:31:53
would say that if you
10:31:54
stockpile, you know, try to
10:31:55
stockpile at least a week. It used to be
10:31:57
three days. And then we
10:31:58
found is that a week's
10:32:00
better. So if you can, if you can do a
10:32:01
week of stockpiling, it
10:32:03
just really helps with
10:32:04
that transit because then you're not, you
10:32:06
know, when we have these pods, points of
10:32:09
distribution where we're handing out
10:32:10
water and ice and that
10:32:11
kind of, and maybe you get
10:32:12
a couple MREs for the week. Those get
10:32:15
overcrowded. They get
10:32:16
overcrowded. There's
10:32:17
people in line for maybe hours. And if
10:32:19
you have all that at
10:32:20
home already, it just makes
10:32:21
it so much easier. It's just less strain
10:32:23
on you and it's less
10:32:24
strain on the system.
10:32:26
Question. If say if I'm at home and
10:32:28
powers out going to be a
10:32:30
couple three days or more
10:32:31
before I get get the opportunity to get
10:32:34
regular electricity
10:32:35
back in the home, should I
10:32:37
should I be thinking about a camp stove
10:32:38
and how would I use it if I were?
10:32:40
Well, if you're going to use something
10:32:41
like that, anything
10:32:42
that's like a camp stove or
10:32:44
something that has propane or, you know,
10:32:47
something along that
10:32:48
lines, just make sure you
10:32:49
don't use it inside. That's number one.
10:32:51
And number two, make
10:32:52
sure when you use it, you
10:32:53
use it safely because you're talking
10:32:54
about something that
10:32:55
it's an open flame. It's
10:32:56
something that, you know, if it builds up
10:32:58
enough and it could be
10:33:00
a little bit tiny bit
10:33:01
explosive. Sure. And then on on the same
10:33:04
token with that, when we're talking about
10:33:06
that, the generator, make sure that your
10:33:09
generators outside of your house as well.
10:33:11
You don't want your generator in an
10:33:12
enclosed environment
10:33:12
because it builds up CO. And
10:33:14
that we've, you know, unfortunately,
10:33:17
we've had that problem
10:33:18
even in my career where I've
10:33:20
seen it where we've been in the houses
10:33:21
where people were
10:33:22
running the generators and and
10:33:24
passed away. So you just want to make
10:33:26
sure that you're not
10:33:27
doing that. Anything that has
10:33:28
an open flame can create can create like
10:33:32
CO or something that
10:33:33
disrupts the oxygen in your
10:33:34
in your environment. You don't want that
10:33:36
inside. You want to make
10:33:37
sure that's all outside.
10:33:38
And I would think that that apply to it
10:33:40
during the storm when
10:33:41
it's dark and it's windy
10:33:42
outside. People might want to light a
10:33:44
candle. You don't want to do that inside.
10:33:46
Yeah, I mean, it's it's fine to have
10:33:48
candles, candles,
10:33:49
candles, candles are fine. The
10:33:52
problem is, is that you want to make sure
10:33:54
that if you're going
10:33:54
to go to bed or you're
10:33:55
going to do something like that, you want
10:33:56
to make sure that
10:33:57
those candles are put out
10:33:59
completely before you lay down to go to
10:34:01
bed. You know, any
10:34:03
anything, smoking candles, any
10:34:05
other day that those are open flames, you
10:34:07
have to treat them,
10:34:08
you know, with respect.
10:34:09
OK, for folks who are new to the area or
10:34:12
folks who are really
10:34:13
not, you know, paying
10:34:14
close attention to the to classification
10:34:16
of storms, we have
10:34:18
different levels of severity
10:34:20
and strength. Let's go over a little bit
10:34:22
of that. And where is it
10:34:23
that we really start to
10:34:25
have to be totally on our
10:34:26
toes as far as getting prepared?
10:34:28
Well, you have to be totally on your on
10:34:29
your toes to be prepared for anything.
10:34:31
Right. So we you know, we just had
10:34:33
Hurricane Milton, which
10:34:35
actually hit several hundred
10:34:36
miles away from us. But the feeder bans
10:34:38
through tornadoes at
10:34:40
us, a record number of
10:34:42
tornadoes for the state of Florida, a
10:34:44
record number of
10:34:44
tornadoes for Palm Beach County.
10:34:46
We had more EF3 storm tornadoes than
10:34:49
we've had pretty much,
10:34:51
you know, in the last 50
10:34:52
years in one go. And so it it doesn't
10:34:57
matter what the storm
10:34:58
is, whether it's a tropical
10:34:59
storm all the way to a Cat
10:35:00
5, you need to be prepared.
10:35:02
However, a tropical storm is usually like
10:35:05
a very unorganized system.
10:35:07
It's not fully together yet. Sometimes
10:35:09
this can be some of the
10:35:10
worst because they'll sit, they
10:35:11
can sit on top of you for days and days.
10:35:13
I remember back to
10:35:14
Hurricane Francis and Hurricane
10:35:17
Francis wasn't a super strong storm. It
10:35:19
was a category two, not
10:35:21
super strong. When it hit
10:35:22
the coast, it downgraded to a category
10:35:24
one, but it sat on top of
10:35:25
us for 36 straight hours and
10:35:28
just doused us. And so that was, you
10:35:32
know, that was probably a
10:35:33
very dangerous storm, even
10:35:34
though it was only a category one when it
10:35:35
hit us. It was a very
10:35:37
dangerous storm because all of
10:35:38
the flooding that it caused. So category,
10:35:40
you know, historically,
10:35:42
category ones are basically
10:35:44
like a giant thunderstorm, lots of rain,
10:35:46
some wind. We see
10:35:48
thunderstorms in Florida in the
10:35:50
afternoons in the summer with sometimes
10:35:52
60 mile an hour winds. So
10:35:55
it's similar to that, but on
10:35:56
a bigger scale. A category two, now we're
10:35:59
starting to get into like
10:36:00
some, some more devastating
10:36:02
winds. You know, depending on which way
10:36:04
it comes in, storm surge, we
10:36:06
have to worry about. So the
10:36:07
stronger the storm and the way it comes
10:36:08
in, you could get higher and
10:36:10
higher storm surge. And then
10:36:12
a category three is what we call starting
10:36:14
to get into the major
10:36:15
category. Category four is a very,
10:36:18
very strong storm. It's basically a
10:36:21
category five minus a few miles per hour.
10:36:25
So they're very, very
10:36:26
devastating. And then a category five,
10:36:27
which is the most major
10:36:28
storm, we've seen a few of those
10:36:30
lately. And believe it or not, in the
10:36:32
last, since 2000, we've had
10:36:34
more category five storms make
10:36:37
landfall in the United States than we had
10:36:38
since 1850. So it's, you know, we're
10:36:42
starting to see these
10:36:43
rapid intensification of these storms. A
10:36:45
category five is, is a storm that if
10:36:49
you're anywhere near
10:36:51
an evacuation zone, or you're in an
10:36:54
evacuation zone, you really need to think
10:36:55
about, about leaving
10:36:57
evacuation zone, you absolutely need to
10:36:58
leave. If you're on the fringe of
10:37:00
evacuation zone, possibly.
10:37:03
But I would say don't take those storms
10:37:04
lightly. Because we have
10:37:05
seen people that have taken them
10:37:07
lightly and they've paid
10:37:08
for it with their lives.
10:37:09
Well, we're talking about evacuations.
10:37:11
How would I know if I'm
10:37:12
in an evacuation zone?
10:37:13
Yeah, so there's a couple different ways.
10:37:15
One of them is to go to our website,
10:37:16
WPB.org, front slash
10:37:18
hurricane. We have the evacuation zones
10:37:20
there. Palm Beach County
10:37:22
Department of Emergency
10:37:23
Management also has them. They have
10:37:25
booklets at your local
10:37:26
libraries with that information in
10:37:28
as well. And also, you can get them at
10:37:32
any of the county buildings, they have
10:37:34
those, and we have them
10:37:35
here in the city. Those, those booklets
10:37:37
are pretty, pretty good in regards to the
10:37:39
information they have
10:37:40
in them. They have what kit, how you're
10:37:42
going to build a kit, things that you
10:37:44
need to do pre-storm,
10:37:44
things you need to do pro-storm, which if
10:37:47
we're talking post-storm,
10:37:48
you don't need to do anything
10:37:49
but stay in your house. We'll get to that
10:37:51
in a minute. And then of
10:37:52
course, your evacuation
10:37:53
zones. And then we, and we base those
10:37:55
evacuation zones a lot of times on
10:37:57
modeling for storm surge.
10:37:59
Our major concern is flooding. The wind
10:38:03
is a, is a concern,
10:38:04
but flooding, you know,
10:38:06
water is very, very dangerous and it
10:38:08
weighs, you know, it's about eight and a
10:38:10
half pounds a gallon.
10:38:11
So when you're getting thousands of
10:38:13
gallons pushed of water,
10:38:14
push your thousands of pounds
10:38:15
of pressure against your structure, it
10:38:18
could, it could be
10:38:18
devastating and it could, it could
10:38:20
wash you away. It can, you know, it could
10:38:22
do a lot of damage. So if
10:38:24
you are in evacuation zone
10:38:25
and you're told to evacuate, you need to
10:38:27
evacuate. Now we saw the damage that
10:38:29
Hurricane Ian did to
10:38:30
the West coast as far as flooding was
10:38:32
concerned, some of the most stunning
10:38:34
video you've ever seen
10:38:35
of the water running through the city and
10:38:37
wiping things out. Is that
10:38:38
possible here? Yeah, of course,
10:38:40
when you're a coastal city, even if
10:38:42
you're on the inter coastal,
10:38:43
you're still a coastal city.
10:38:45
So what does that mean? Whenever we have
10:38:48
storm surge, we do have
10:38:49
barrier islands. So we have,
10:38:51
for us in the city, it's town of Palm
10:38:53
beach down south, it's further, it's
10:38:55
Manalapan and it got
10:38:56
Jupiter Island north. There's a barrier
10:38:58
islands. If there is, we
10:38:59
still have cutouts. So those
10:39:01
cutouts still bring in the storm surge.
10:39:03
So whenever you have a storm surge, and
10:39:05
we've seen it here in
10:39:06
the city, we've actually, Nicole,
10:39:09
Hurricane Nicole, which was
10:39:10
not a major storm, it was a,
10:39:11
it was a category one, but the way that
10:39:14
it came in, it actually
10:39:15
brought us about four and a half
10:39:16
feet of storm surge, which is right at
10:39:19
the top of our seawall. And
10:39:20
if you were in certain areas of
10:39:22
the city, I have my take my vehicle, my
10:39:26
response vehicle is a Chevy
10:39:29
Tahoe. It's a little bit jacked
10:39:30
up and there was areas that we couldn't
10:39:32
get through and that. So
10:39:33
we, you know, we have dealt
10:39:36
with some storm surge in the city,
10:39:39
especially, you know, if it gets above
10:39:41
the seawall, I mean,
10:39:43
if we have a, if we have a 10 foot storm
10:39:45
surge and a four and a half
10:39:46
foot was at the top of the
10:39:47
seawall, you're going to have another six
10:39:49
feet coming over the wall.
10:39:50
So that could flood all the
10:39:52
way. You know, luckily there's ridges in
10:39:54
the state of Florida. So you
10:39:55
have these, these main ridges
10:39:57
that during the ice to not bore you good.
10:40:00
So during the ice age, you
10:40:02
had a recession of water.
10:40:03
Every time the water receded a certain
10:40:05
amount, it would create a
10:40:06
ridge in the state of Florida,
10:40:07
where we happen to be sitting on a ridge
10:40:09
in the city. That ridge runs
10:40:12
basically just west of Dixie
10:40:14
Highway. So storm surge usually around
10:40:17
the olive, olive and east is
10:40:19
a little bit worse. Whereas if
10:40:20
you're, if you're west of olive, it's not
10:40:23
as bad depending on the
10:40:24
amount of storm surge. Sure. But
10:40:25
we do have, we do have the opportunity
10:40:27
here to have that. Now
10:40:29
we've been talking a lot about
10:40:30
water and storm surge right at the, at
10:40:33
the, at the water's edge.
10:40:35
What about folks who live
10:40:36
further west? Are there, do they have to
10:40:38
worry about it at all?
10:40:39
Yeah, we're not talking storm
10:40:40
surge at that point, but we are talking
10:40:41
flooding. Flooding. So
10:40:42
flooding could be a problem if,
10:40:44
if you're in a neighborhood that doesn't
10:40:46
have great drainage and a
10:40:49
lot of the older neighborhoods
10:40:50
do not, they don't have great, they don't
10:40:52
have great drainage
10:40:53
systems. I mean, we have a really
10:40:55
robust storm, storm system in the city of
10:40:58
West Palm Beach where we
10:40:59
have great drainage. However,
10:41:00
there are still a lot of low lying areas
10:41:03
in the city that we do
10:41:04
worry about. And so you just got
10:41:06
to be mindful of that. And if you are in
10:41:08
one of those zones, once
10:41:09
again, if you see on a, on either
10:41:12
one of the booklets that you can pick up
10:41:13
or on the website, if you
10:41:14
see you're in a zone and you're
10:41:16
told to evacuate, evacuate. Okay. And
10:41:18
that actually brings us to
10:41:20
the next part of our discussion.
10:41:22
This seems to me that you have, you have
10:41:24
a choice. Everybody has a choice. Do I
10:41:27
stay or do I go? And
10:41:29
so there, we've talked about some of the
10:41:31
factors that are involved
10:41:32
in making that decision.
10:41:34
Flooding, you know, the, the danger of
10:41:37
the home that you're in,
10:41:39
what other factors are really involved in
10:41:41
making a decision? So if
10:41:43
you're in a, in a zone and you're
10:41:45
told to evacuate, evacuate. However, if
10:41:47
you're not, it's a personal
10:41:49
preference. And I will tell
10:41:50
you that it's a, it's very dependent on
10:41:53
the person. But we have
10:41:55
seen in the past and I'll use,
10:41:58
oh gosh, let me think about which
10:42:01
hurricane this was. We've had
10:42:02
a few. Just a few hurricanes.
10:42:04
Yeah. We, I'm trying to remember which
10:42:06
hurricane it was, but it
10:42:07
was basically making a direct
10:42:09
beeline for us and then wrapped around
10:42:11
the, you know, under, south of us and
10:42:13
came right up on the
10:42:14
west coast. So we had a lot of people
10:42:16
that evacuated from us
10:42:17
to the west coast. And I
10:42:19
want to say it was Irma. I think you're
10:42:21
right. But I'm, yeah, I
10:42:22
think it was Irma. So where
10:42:25
they evacuated to the west coast and it
10:42:27
hit harder on the west coast
10:42:28
than it did on the east coast,
10:42:30
even though we still got category two
10:42:32
winds and it was, you know,
10:42:33
we still had, we caught a tree
10:42:35
maguette and we still had, you know, we
10:42:36
still had a lot of issues here in the
10:42:37
city with that storm,
10:42:38
but it wrapped on with the west coast and
10:42:40
then took a straight
10:42:42
track right through Atlanta,
10:42:43
almost similar to what happened in North
10:42:45
Carolina. You know, we saw that happen
10:42:47
with, with, with Irma,
10:42:49
where it went across the state and
10:42:50
straight up through Georgia and the
10:42:51
Carolinas. So the problem
10:42:53
was, is those people that evacuated to
10:42:55
the west coast and into
10:42:56
Georgia almost got it worse than
10:42:58
what we got. So it's like I said, it's a
10:43:00
personal preference. You
10:43:02
know, we're not going to tell you
10:43:03
if you're not in an evacuation zone,
10:43:05
we're not going to tell you
10:43:06
whether you need to or not.
10:43:07
However, if you are going to do it early,
10:43:11
don't wait. Because one of
10:43:13
the things that we see is
10:43:14
the people that wait around and then do
10:43:15
it late is they get trapped on the
10:43:17
interstate. There is no gas
10:43:19
because everybody's buying gas. And then
10:43:22
you're, now you're running into other
10:43:23
issues. So if you're
10:43:25
going to, you know, if you're going to do
10:43:26
it, you know, do it early.
10:43:30
If you decide to stay and you
10:43:31
say, okay, I'm not going to try to get on
10:43:33
I-95. I'm not trying to
10:43:35
move out, move upstate or out
10:43:36
over to the west coast. I'm going to stay
10:43:38
here in the county.
10:43:40
Let's talk a little bit about
10:43:41
shelters. What's the process of getting
10:43:46
into a shelter? Do I just
10:43:46
walk in or what happens?
10:43:48
So most shelters that are open, that are
10:43:50
not special needs or pet
10:43:51
friendly, yeah, you can
10:43:53
just go to, you don't have to, you don't
10:43:54
have to register for them,
10:43:55
you can just kind of show up.
10:43:57
And depending on the amount of evacuation
10:43:59
zones that we start to
10:44:01
empty out and what we think the
10:44:03
storm surge is going to be, and there's a
10:44:05
lot of factors to go into
10:44:06
it. Depends on how many, how
10:44:08
many shelters open. Most of the time we
10:44:10
open anywhere between
10:44:11
nine and 12 shelters. Some of
10:44:14
those are special needs and pet friendly.
10:44:16
So if you are a special
10:44:18
needs person that needs, like you
10:44:20
have a, you have an oxygen machine you
10:44:24
have to carry with you, or
10:44:25
you have, you have to have, do
10:44:26
dialysis and you need a power source. You
10:44:30
need to go ahead and
10:44:31
register now with the county, with
10:44:32
Palm Beach County Department of Emergency
10:44:34
Management. If you go to
10:44:35
their site and you put in
10:44:36
special needs shelter, you'll find that
10:44:38
there is a registration form. You can
10:44:39
fill out that registration
10:44:40
form and that does help a lot with the
10:44:43
process. And that's an
10:44:44
important point that the shelters
10:44:46
are run by the county. They're not a city
10:44:48
operation. Correct.
10:44:50
Don't call the city on that.
10:44:51
Call the county. So none of the
10:44:52
municipalities, there's 39
10:44:53
municipalities in this county.
10:44:55
None of them operate shelters. Okay. The
10:44:57
county operates shelters.
10:44:58
That is actually a state
10:45:01
statute that the counties operate,
10:45:04
operate those. And then the same thing
10:45:07
with evacuation zones.
10:45:08
The county's, the county actually is the
10:45:11
one that determines when
10:45:13
we're going to evacuate and who's
10:45:15
going to evacuate. When I go to a
10:45:17
shelter, do I bring food and
10:45:19
water? Do I bring bedding? What
10:45:21
sort of thing? So when you go to a
10:45:22
shelter, you literally only get a very
10:45:25
small, about a 60, not
10:45:26
even 60 square feet of area for you. You
10:45:29
can basically get a cot
10:45:30
and a small area around that
10:45:31
cot for your stuff. So you shouldn't
10:45:34
bring a lot. You shouldn't bring a lot
10:45:36
with you. Try to, you
10:45:37
know, you'll, mostly the food and water
10:45:39
will be provided at the
10:45:40
shelter unless, unless determined
10:45:42
otherwise by the county. So you should be
10:45:46
covered with that. But if
10:45:47
you wanted to bring your own,
10:45:49
you know, pillow and stuff like that, I
10:45:51
would absolutely bring it.
10:45:52
I would not bring a lot of
10:45:53
personal items. A lot of people like to
10:45:56
grab as much as they can
10:45:57
and bring it with them. The
10:45:57
problem is there's just not a lot of
10:45:59
space for it. And there's a
10:46:00
good chance that they're going
10:46:00
to tell you to leave it in your car. Or
10:46:02
you're going to have to
10:46:03
take it back because they're
10:46:04
not going to have space for it. It's a
10:46:06
very limited, when we're
10:46:07
talking about shelters,
10:46:09
it's mostly schools or other government
10:46:11
type buildings, but
10:46:12
definitely schools. And the gym
10:46:14
is basically the big sleeping areas or,
10:46:16
and then they may put people in the
10:46:18
hallways, but that's
10:46:19
it. I mean, there's not a lot of area for
10:46:21
you to go. So just be
10:46:22
sparse on what you bring.
10:46:23
And there's only very specific shelters
10:46:25
or a shelter that will accept pets.
10:46:28
Yeah. So the same thing with very similar
10:46:30
to a special needs
10:46:31
shelter. You have to make sure
10:46:33
you register for a pet friendly shelter.
10:46:35
Okay. All right. So we've
10:46:37
talked a lot about, about
10:46:39
getting ready, what we, what we need to
10:46:41
have, what should, should
10:46:42
we be doing prior to a storm,
10:46:44
when we should be doing it? Let's talk
10:46:47
just a little bit
10:46:48
about, okay, there is a storm
10:46:49
underway. I'm in my home. I'm in a place
10:46:52
where it has not been
10:46:53
evacuated. We have been asked to
10:46:54
leave. What are the things I shouldn't be
10:46:56
doing? Should I open door and look
10:46:57
outside? What's going
10:46:58
on? So if it was 1985, I would say have a
10:47:02
hurricane party. That's
10:47:04
what everybody used to do.
10:47:06
You know, but you know that and I, and
10:47:08
I'm just, but basically,
10:47:10
you know, the biggest thing
10:47:12
during the storm is you want to stay in
10:47:14
the, in the house. You want
10:47:16
to have a, you want to make
10:47:17
sure that you have a plan. So that plan
10:47:19
includes, do I have a safe
10:47:20
area in my house that I can go
10:47:21
to if I have to somewhere there's no
10:47:24
windows and interior room. If it's a
10:47:28
bathroom, even better.
10:47:29
Cause then you can have, you can have the
10:47:30
tub. If you have a tub, you
10:47:32
know, I know a lot of houses
10:47:33
now don't have tubs like the old days,
10:47:35
but a tub is always a really good place
10:47:37
to go because they're
10:47:37
made out of some type of metal or cast
10:47:39
iron. And you know, if you have a
10:47:41
collapse, they usually are
10:47:42
pretty solid structures. And then, you
10:47:45
know, make sure you have a plan, make
10:47:46
sure you have a plan
10:47:47
with your family. If we have to leave
10:47:48
this house, what is our safe
10:47:50
area? Where are we going to go?
10:47:51
If we get split up, where are we going to
10:47:53
meet? And then are we going
10:47:54
to go to a neighbor's house?
10:47:55
Are we going to go to the car? All of
10:47:57
these things are factors. So you got to
10:48:00
make sure that you have
10:48:00
that plan. I actually go over with my son
10:48:03
pretty regularly. Like,
10:48:04
Hey, if we had a fire in the
10:48:06
house or we had something, how are you
10:48:07
getting out? And you know, he, he tells
10:48:09
me how. So, and I say,
10:48:10
okay, where are we meeting? I'm meeting
10:48:12
at the park across the
10:48:13
street. So there's all of these
10:48:14
factors that you want to make sure that
10:48:15
you have, especially with
10:48:16
your family, because you want to
10:48:17
make sure that your family's safe and
10:48:19
they know what's going on.
10:48:20
The biggest thing is if you're
10:48:21
going to stay, stay behind, once the
10:48:24
storm is cleared, stay at
10:48:26
your house. If you have to make
10:48:26
some repairs to your house, that's fine.
10:48:29
Go outside. But you got
10:48:31
to also remember there's,
10:48:32
there's a lot of things going on post
10:48:34
storm. Is there power lines
10:48:35
down? Is there tree branches
10:48:36
hanging on by a thread that could fall at
10:48:38
any time? Is, is there
10:48:40
flooding outside of your house
10:48:41
and that you're going to get caught up
10:48:42
in? Is there, you know, in
10:48:44
Florida, we are in Florida,
10:48:45
is there, if there is flooding, is there
10:48:47
going to be snakes and is
10:48:48
there going to be gators and is
10:48:49
there going to be any number of things if
10:48:51
you're on the West coast,
10:48:53
apparently, and I don't know how
10:48:54
true it is, there's sharks and on the
10:48:56
street. So, you know, so, you
10:48:59
know, make sure that you don't
10:49:00
go out. And then the other part of this
10:49:01
is you may be impeding the first
10:49:03
responders. If you're out,
10:49:04
you know, a lot of people like to be
10:49:05
lucky, lose and get in their
10:49:06
car and try to drive around.
10:49:08
This is a double whammy. So number one,
10:49:10
you might get in trouble and
10:49:11
then we got to come get you.
10:49:13
Number two, you're in the way. So if
10:49:15
we're trying, you know, our first 72
10:49:16
hours is really about life
10:49:18
safety. It's about going out and trying
10:49:19
to rescue people and responding to the
10:49:21
calls that have been
10:49:22
queued up for the last however many
10:49:23
hours, depending on the storm. And we
10:49:26
have to get through. We have
10:49:27
cut teams that go out and they're cutting
10:49:28
trees and throwing them out of the
10:49:29
roadway. And if you're
10:49:30
out there, you're in the way. If you're
10:49:32
blocking one of the trees,
10:49:33
and you can't get out, then we
10:49:34
can't cut the tree and it just impedes
10:49:36
it, it leads right away for our first
10:49:38
responders to get through.
10:49:40
So just stay home, stay home for the
10:49:42
first couple days. There'll be
10:49:44
plenty of pictures, you know,
10:49:45
we take pictures and we post them and
10:49:47
that kind of stuff. There'll
10:49:48
be plenty of that stuff that
10:49:49
you can see. Stay close to your house,
10:49:51
don't try to get too far
10:49:52
away, because then you can become
10:49:54
a victim as well. Sure. One of the things
10:49:57
that I wanted to touch on
10:49:58
was the need for information
10:50:00
and getting communication out properly.
10:50:02
Now we live in a world
10:50:03
where, you know, you're going to
10:50:05
call up Instagram and you're going to see
10:50:07
a map of where the storm is
10:50:08
heading. Who knows who put
10:50:09
it there? Right. Who knows if it's
10:50:11
correct? What advice do we have for folks
10:50:13
so that they get the
10:50:14
right information for area for the folks
10:50:17
who live in West Palm Beach? Local
10:50:19
officials, local officials,
10:50:20
local news. We feed the news constantly.
10:50:24
We are constantly giving
10:50:24
them information so that they
10:50:26
can put information out. Same thing with
10:50:28
our social media, the
10:50:30
city social media, you know,
10:50:32
the city hotline, which is the 822-222
10:50:35
number. These are all ways
10:50:37
to get the information. Do not
10:50:39
listen to people who are not experts at
10:50:41
this. Do not listen to
10:50:42
people that are talking heads and
10:50:44
just want to get clicks for you. You
10:50:46
know, I see it a lot. I see it even on
10:50:49
YouTube and I see it on
10:50:51
some of these other Facebook and things
10:50:54
like that. I see these
10:50:56
people that want to get clicks
10:50:57
and they'll say, major hurricane, major
10:50:59
this, or storm systems
10:51:01
already. And they're, it's funny
10:51:03
because they're not even, number one,
10:51:05
they're not experts. And number two,
10:51:07
they're not even local
10:51:07
people. They're people from, they may be
10:51:10
sitting in their house in
10:51:11
New Jersey just trying to get
10:51:12
clicks. So it's more about just listening
10:51:15
to local, local officials,
10:51:17
making sure that you have the
10:51:18
right things in place. So, so make sure
10:51:21
you're watching whatever
10:51:22
news channel you watch,
10:51:23
make sure that you're following the city
10:51:25
or the city fire
10:51:26
department or city police department
10:51:28
on Instagram or Facebook or whatever
10:51:30
social media you're on and, and stay off
10:51:33
of the people who are
10:51:35
not in any of those capacities because
10:51:37
you're going to be getting false
10:51:38
information. And when
10:51:39
you say local news channels, it's, I
10:51:42
think it's also important to
10:51:42
point out, you know, listen to
10:51:44
West Palm beach, local news, nothing
10:51:47
against the folks in Miami,
10:51:48
but there's a big difference
10:51:49
between hitting a storm hitting in Miami
10:51:51
and hitting a West Palm
10:51:52
beach. Yeah. There's, so,
10:51:54
you know, anytime you're talking about a
10:51:56
70 mile difference, that
10:51:59
could be a huge difference in a
10:52:01
storm. So, you know, you could get, and
10:52:03
I'll bring up Milton once
10:52:05
again, Milton hit the West coast,
10:52:07
it hit 150 miles away from us, but yet we
10:52:10
had the worst damage of
10:52:12
anybody because between
10:52:14
the Tri County area, Palm beach, Martin
10:52:16
and St. Lucie, the tornadoes
10:52:18
that came off of that storm
10:52:19
were insane. They're just some of the
10:52:21
most, I've lived here in my
10:52:23
entire life since 1970. Well,
10:52:25
not my entire life, but since 1977 and
10:52:28
it's the worst, that's the worst
10:52:30
tornadoes I've ever seen
10:52:31
in Florida. So every, every hurricane
10:52:34
season is unique. There are
10:52:36
all kinds of forecasts going
10:52:38
back and forth. Here we are this year.
10:52:40
What is the general
10:52:42
advice you'd want to give folks
10:52:44
for this hurricane season? Just be
10:52:46
prepared. The biggest thing is be
10:52:48
prepared and just don't listen
10:52:50
to all the talking heads about things.
10:52:52
You know, listen to the
10:52:53
national weather service,
10:52:54
listen to the Colorado state university.
10:52:56
Those are the people that
10:52:57
are putting these forecasts
10:52:58
together. And honestly, it's a forecast
10:53:02
and it only takes one storm.
10:53:04
You know, Andrew is a perfect
10:53:06
example. We were in a down year with
10:53:08
Andrew. It was a late August.
10:53:10
We hadn't even had a storm in
10:53:11
the, in the basin yet. And out of
10:53:14
nowhere, here comes Andrew
10:53:16
and Andrew was devastating. And,
10:53:19
it was, it was the only devastating, it
10:53:21
was the only storm that
10:53:22
season that was really a bad storm.
10:53:25
So it only takes one, whether it's we're
10:53:28
going to get 15 storms this year or
10:53:29
whether we're going to
10:53:30
get 30 storms this year, it doesn't
10:53:32
really matter because it takes that one
10:53:33
storm that comes across
10:53:34
and just devastates everything. So the
10:53:37
biggest thing is just be
10:53:38
prepared, build your kit,
10:53:40
have a plan and make sure
10:53:42
you know your evacuation zones.
10:53:44
Brent Bloomfield, thank you so much for
10:53:46
what you do. We
10:53:47
appreciate you being here.
10:53:48
Awesome. Thank you.
10:53:49
And thank you for joining us. This has
10:53:51
been the City Center
10:53:52
podcast from West Palm Beach.
10:53:54
This is a product of the City of West
10:53:55
Palm Beach Communications Department.
10:53:57
We'll see you next time.