GUIDE HURRICANE PREPAREDNESS THE OFFICIAL GALVESTON COUNTYEngineers for Hurricane Ike's "Last House Standing" (855) WIND-ENG info@AranFranklin.com www.AranFranklin.com Beaumont | Rockport | Texas City | Cape Coral, FL Registered Windstorm Design & Inspection Structural Engineering Pre-Engineered Drawings Credit: Smiley N. Pool123 TexasWindstormInsurancewww.twia.org/galveston YOU CAN’T FORECAST but you can forecast your recovery. STORM SEASON Attention TWIA policyholders, Learn more about hurricane preparedness at: GET COVERED Make sure you have both windstorm and flood insurance. TWIA policies only cover wind and hail damage, they do not cover flood damage. AVOID SURPRISES Talk to your agent annually about the coverage level that is right for you. Knowing how you’re covered before a storm is vital to understanding your recovery process. CONTACT US We are here to help after a storm. TWIA policyholders can report a claim 24 hours a day at (800) 788-8247 and online at www.twia.org/ claimscenter.6 Editor’s Note: Just when you thought it couldn’t get more complicated 7 ‘New normal’ presents special challenges for hurricane preparedness 11 Knowing the rules for evacuations key during hurricane season 12 Despite COVID, planning and evacuation still the order of the day 14 Hurricane evacuation ZIP zones 15 Hurricane 411 20 Anatomy of a hurricane 22 Governments have plans to evacuate people with special needs 24 Evacuating hospitals an especially tricky task with COVID-19 26 Will there be a supply shortage during hurricane season? 28 Windstorm insurance needed to cover hurricane losses 29 Stay connected with The Daily News contents4 | The Daily News | Hurricane Preparedness | 2020HURRICANE PLAN AHEAD THIS SEASON BE ASSURED • Your savings are federally insured up to $250,000 by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), an agency of the U.S. Government and backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government. • AMOCO disaster recovery plans ensure that members’ account records are secure even if credit union facilities are damaged. • AMOCO will work to make sure members’ funds are accessible, but necessary actions may need to be taken to ensure the safety of its facilities, records, and personnel. Necessary actions may include branch closures, cash withdrawal limits and interruptions to electronic services. HOW TO PREPARE • Make arrangements to have needed supplies and cash on hand in case of a sudden evacuation. • Make arrangements to obtain important documents and other valuable items from your safe deposit box prior to a mandatory evacuation. • Carry your AMOCO Credit Card, Debit Card and checkbook with you at all times for safe and convenient cash or payment options. • Locate credit union shared service centers and ATMs on your evacuation route by visiting AMOCOfcu.org. This will enable you to access your AMOCO accounts at numerous locations. 800.231.6053 | AMOCOfcu.org BE ADVISED AMOCO will obey all civil defense warnings and directives in the event of severe weather. STAY INFORMED In the event of severe weather, AMOCO will utilize all forms of communication to keep members informed. This includes but is not limited to, our website, mobile app, Facebook, Twitter, email communications, etc. Visit AMOCOfcu.org for continuous updates regarding important credit union notices and information. Follow us on:6 | The Daily News | Hurricane Preparedness | 2020 editor’s note By MICHAEL A. SMITH The Daily News H ad anybody asked as recently as March 1 whether the 2020 hurricane season would be far more complex and fraught with uncertain- ty than any of those in the past, we’d have said no. And we’d have been wrong. Everybody who has lived along the Tex- as Coast for a few years, knows the drill, or did until COVID-19 put a new and unex- pected twist on that old concern. Like every year, the official start of the At- lantic hurricane season is June 1. Most of know that it’s time to begin planning what we’ll do if a big storm heads this way. This year, though, we’ve got to ask new questions. How, for example, can several hundred thousand people evacuate inland during a time of social distancing? Where are all those people supposed to go if jamming them together on cots in emergency shelters is not an option? Will it be safe even to put two or three families in a single-family home some- where inland? How do you get hundreds of aged and infirm people who can’t evacuate them- selves out of harm’s way without packing them onto buses, as has been the method? The good news is that emergency management officials at all levels of government have been asking those same questions and have plans about how to conduct a mass evacuation during a virus pandemic. We’ve tried to provide an overview of those here. A lot of uncertainty remains, howev- er. The season starts now, for practical purposes, but probably won’t really get roiling until late July or earlier August. Will the COVID-19 pandemic be better then, be over, be worse? Who knows? One thing that has not changed and is certain: The single most important thing you can do is to get your family together and make a plan. Decide now what you’re going to do. It’s easier to make decisions when things are relatively calm. When a storm is bearing down on you, it’s a little harder to think clearly. It’s a little harder to remem- ber all those little details of things you’ll need when you hear the evacuation order. That’s why The Daily News produces this annual Hurricane Guide. We want to provide you with information that you can use to make an informed plan. Start your plan by making lists of things you want to do and supplies you need. It helps to put things in writing. Think in terms of needs — what will you need, what will your family need, your pets, your house. Think about essentials — special medications and food, contact lenses and insurance papers. What does your car need? Will it hold up to creeping along for hours in heavy traffic and blistering heat? Are the tires good? Is the spare? Is there a spare? A jack? A handle? Do you know how to use them? If you’re stuck, you could start with some advice that old coastal dwellers used to give to newcomers. Find a big container or duffel bag. Declare that it’s your disaster kit. As you think of things you’ll need, start stuffing them into your kit. Seeing your kit every day for a couple of weeks will keep you and other mem- bers of your family thinking about what must be done when a storm enters the Gulf. The point of that big container or duffel bag is that it’s a place to start. And that’s really the point about all this talk about the start of another storm season. It’s a reminder that you need to get started on your plan. And stay tuned to The Daily News and GalvNews.com. We’ll be reporting the sea- son in depth and detail the whole way. This is the first, not the last, word on hurricane season 2020. Michael A. Smith is the editor of The Daily News. Just when we thought it couldn’t get more complicated MICHAEL A. SMITH Brad Loper/Dallas Morning News, AP photo Some structures remain standing among other destroyed homes in Crystal Beach along the Bolivar Penin- sula following Hurricane Ike on Sept. 14, 2008.2020 | Hurricane Preparedness | The Daily News | 7 By STAN BLAZYK Correspondent H urricane season is fast approaching. That is not some- thing we look forward to, but as coastal residents, it is something we must plan for. Two distinct challenges face emergency managers, public officials, and all who live in an area likely to be threat- ened by a tropical storm or hurricane. The first challenge has to do with the COVID-19 epidemic, which will be cov- ered elsewhere in this guide. Needless to say, the ongoing epidemic tremendously com- plicates hurricane planning and preparation. The second challenge is a longer term, systemic change that will impact hurricane preparedness this year and beyond. This is related to the slower movement and increased stalling observed in hurricanes and tropical storms. Several research articles have appeared in recent years documenting this trend. Scientists with NOAA and other institutions have found that the forward motion of hurricanes and tropical storms has decreased measurably since 1949 along with a greater tendency for these systems to stall. We have experienced this trend locally with Tropical Storm Imelda last season, Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Hurricane Isaac in 2012 and Tropical Storm Allison in 2001. Elsewhere, we have seen Hurricane Dorian, which nearly stalled as it slowly crossed the Bahamas in 2019 as a Category 5 and Hurricane Florence in 2017, which slowed to a crawl dumping a state record 33.90 inches of rain in Swansboro, North Carolina. To explain the signifi- cance of this change, a brief description of the movement of tropical systems in the ‘New normal’ presents special challenges for hurricane preparedness Courtesy/National Weather Service Tropical Storm Imelda is the fourth wettest tropical cyclone to impact Texas, according to the National Weather Service. Rainfall totals exceeded 30 inches in just three days over southeast Montgomery, northeast Harris and Cham- bers counties. Map of the North Atlantic Ocean showing the area of hurricane and tropical-storm activity (light green). Tropical depressions (red symbols) form within or near the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ, light purple), a zone of low pressure near the equator where trade winds converge and cause moist air to become unstable and rise. Tropical depressions gain strength from warm surface waters and often intensify into tropical storms and hurricanes as they are forced westward by the trade winds and the anticyclonic (clockwise) rotation of the Bermuda High. The storm paths also are influenced by low-pressure systems that move eastward across continental North America, generally caus- ing the storms to recurve and change their heading toward the north and east. Courtesy/U.S. Geological Survey8 | The Daily News | Hurricane Preparedness | 2020 Atlantic Basin is useful. Tropical systems typically form in the tropics just north of the equator (10-20 de- grees north latitude). These disturbances move along the prevailing atmospheric wind flow, which in the summer into fall tends to be east-to- west in that region due to a persistent upper-level high to the north. The clockwise circulation around this upper high (the Azores or Bermuda High) causes the wind flow and embedded disturbances to track generally in a westerly direction across the Tropical Atlantic Basin. In a typical season, about 60 tropical disturbances form in the Tropical Atlantic. About two-thirds of the time, a weakness will develop in the upper high at some point as a system moves westward. This influences the storm to turn northwest or northward, and then curve into the mid-lati- tude westerlies, sending them either into the north Atlantic or northern Gulf of Mexico east of Texas. When weakness fails to occur, then the storms will continue west toward Texas or Mexico. The Texas coast, howev- er, can find itself situated near the western fringes of the Bermuda High and east of prevailing low and high pressure systems over the Southwestern United States. This sometimes results in a zone of weak steering currents over the western Gulf of Mexico. The recent research on hurri- cane movement suggests that these periods are becoming more common due to a gen- eral decrease in atmospheric circulation. The implications of this for hurricane and tropical storm planning and preparedness are staggering. Slower moving storms are troubling because of the following: 1. Increased risk of exces- sive rainfall and flooding: We should be prepared for more major flooding events such as Tropical Storm Clau- dette (1979), which virtually stalled north of Houston (with 42 inches in Alvin); Tropical Storm Allison (1989), which made a slow loop over East Texas (with 21 inches of rain near Beau- mont and 30 inches just east of Houston); Tropical Storm Allison (2001) with 36.99 inches of rain and massive flooding in Houston; Hurri- cane Harvey (2017), which moved inland near Rockport, stalled and then drifted back into the Gulf of Mexico pro- ducing an unprecedented 56- inch rainfall total in Friend- swood and amounts of 40 to 50 inches over large sections of Galveston County and Southeast Texas; and Tropical Storm Imelda (2019) which made a slow loop north of Houston after ambling ashore southwest of Freeport caus- ing major flooding from the Galveston-Houston area east- ward with rainfall totals of 40 inches near Winnie and 17 inches in Galveston, Anahuac and Kingwood. Understanding your flood zone risk, having adequate flood insurance, building higher raised structures, and having a plan when an ex- cessive rainfall event threat- ens are good starting points in preparing for potential flooding. 2. Higher tides and water buildup: The longer a storm takes to move inland, the more likely that even for fairly modest storms, winds blowing onshore ahead of the center will result in higher inundation levels. A good example of this factor is the contrast between Category In a typical season, about 60 tropical disturbances form in the Tropical Atlantic. Courtesy/National Weather Service LEFT: Rainfall totals from Tropical Storm Allison in 2001. RIGHT: Total rainfall for Tropical Storm Claudette in 1979. A record-breaking 42 inches of rain fell in 24 hours in Alvin.2020 | Hurricane Preparedness | The Daily News | 9 2 Hurricane Gustav (2008) with peak winds of 115 mph, which produced a high tide of 7.5 feet as it moved ashore over Louisiana, while the very slow-moving Category 1 Hur- ricane Isaac (2012) with peak winds of 80 mph at landfall produced an 11-foot tide over the same region. So hurricane planning should include steps for deal- ing with higher water levels and storm surge potential as well as excessive rainfall. 3. Prolonged exposure to high wind: The slower a storm moves the more likely it is that structures and natu- ral features, such as trees, will be exposed to a prolonged period of high winds. Wind damage is related to both wind intensity and duration. A longer period of strong winds means greater stress to objects in their path. In prolonged wind events, evac- uation may be a better option than sheltering in place. In any case, extra supplies will be needed should you stay home due to the prolonged period of disruption from the storm. 4. Longer evacuation periods: Slow moving or stalled storms will dramati- cally increase the amount of time that evacuees may need to shelter before being able to return home. It also will increase the time required to restore utilities and other essential services, slowing down recovery efforts. 5. Delaying preparations: Finally, another negative con- sequence of slower moving storms will be a tendency for some people to delay preparations or minimize the potential threat. With water buildup and increasing tides, exit routes could be blocked, trapping those who hesitate as tragically happened with Hurricane Ike. Rather than being dis- couraged, knowing what to expect can allow coastal residents to mitigate some of the risks associated slower moving tropical systems. Awareness is the first step in proper planning and preparation. The slower a storm moves the more likely it is that structures and natural features, such as trees, will be exposed to a prolonged period of high winds. Courtesy/NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Images Lab During summer 2004 and 2005, the Bermuda High expanded to the south and west, which steered hurricanes into the Gulf of Mexico rather than up the east coast or curving out to sea. Courtesy/National Hurricane Center Hurricane Harvey’s track from Aug. 17, 2017 to Sept. 1, 2017.Next >