< Previous20 | The Daily News | Hurricane Preparedness | 2020 HURRICANE ANATOMY OF A Hurricanes are born in the steamy late-summer environment of the tropics when rapidly evaporating ocean waters combine with strong wind currents. Several hundred miles wide and packing winds of more than 100 mph, hurricanes cool the Earth by sucking heat from the Earth’s surface and drawing it into the upper atmosphere (above 40,000 feet). EXHAUST Hot air is drawn into the atmosphere SPIRALING STORM CLOUDS EYE WALL Storm’s fiercest winds EYE Cool air descends into the 20-mile-wide eye, creating a small center of calm weather SPIRALING WINDS SPIN COUNTER- CLOCKWISE In the lower few thousand feet of the hurricane, air flows in toward the center and whirls upward. These spiraling winds gain speed as they approach the central eye, just as currents do in a whirlpool. The narrower the eye, the stronger the winds. HIGH WINDS SOURCE: The National Hurricane Center AP Illustrations SOUTH AMERICA U.S. ATLANTIC OCEAN AFRICA WARM WATERS HURRICANE BREEDING GROUNDS2020 | Hurricane Preparedness | The Daily News | 21 HURRICANE INTENSITY Any storm of Category 3 or more is considered major. SOURCE: The National Hurricane Center AP Illustrations CATEGORY 1 74-95 mph Damage primarily to trees and unanchored mobile homes; some coastal flooding CATEGORY 2 96-110 mph Some damage to roofs, doors, windows, trees and shrubbery; flooding damage to piers CATEGORY 3 111-130 mph Some structural damage; large trees blown down; flooding near shoreline and possibly inland; mobile homes destroyed CATEGORY 4 131-155 mph Extensive damage to doors and windows; major damage to lower floors near shore; terrain may be flooded well inland CATEGORY 5 155+ mph Complete roof failure and some building failures; massive evacuation; flooding causes major damage to lower floors of all shoreline buldings KNOW THE TERMS • Hurricane: A tropical cyclone with minimum sustained wind speed of 74 mph or higher. • Hurricane season: The portion of the year having a relatively high incidence of hurricanes. The hurricane sea- son in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico runs from June 1 to Nov. 30. • Saffir-Simpson Scale*: Cate- gories of hurricanes based on sustained wind speeds. Storm categories do not correlate to the severity of the storm’s impact on land. • Storm surge: An abnormal rise in sea level that sweeps along the coast near the eye of hurricane landfall. Storm surg- es can reach 25 feet high and be 50-1,000 miles wide. Storm surge is the greatest threat to life and property during a hurricane. • Tropical storm: A tropical cy- clone with minimum sustained wind speed of 39-73 mph. • Tropical storm/hurricane watch: Tropical storm/hurri- cane conditions pose a threat to watch area within 48 hours. • Tropical Storm/hurricane warning: Tropical storm/hurri- cane conditions are expected within 36 hours. *Remember: Storm categories only account for wind speed. Low category hurricanes can be more devastating to life and property than high category storms because of the associ- ated storm surge. Please act on the advice from local officials. SOURCES: City of Galveston, FEMA22 | The Daily News | Hurricane Preparedness | 2020 Jennifer Reynolds/The Daily News file photo Galveston Independent School District officer Willie Alcocer, left, helps Belle Kenney to one of the buses evacuating residents from Galveston to a shelter in San Antonio in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike in 2008. By KERI HEATH The Daily News P eople who usually require assistance to evacuate or shelter during a hurricane need to be aware of some changes to the normal procedures. While residents pile into their cars for the slow journey inward, many people who need help getting out of town utilize a free state-run program called State of Texas Emergency Assistance Registry, or STEAR. Aged people, those with disabilities and people who require medical or transporta- tion assistance can load onto buses that will transport them to Austin during an evacuation. The state is working with local jurisdic- tions to ensure the STEAR program can accommodate social distancing and other COVID-19-related mea- sures, Texas Depart- ment of Emergency Management spokes- man Seth Christensen said. “Available STEAR services during a disaster will vary by community,” Chris- tensen said. The cities will need to accommodate extra seats on the buses that transport people to allow for social distancing, Galveston’s Chief of Emergency Management Mark Morgan said. People will be screened upon enter- ing the buses and will be spaced farther apart to prevent spread of the virus, Morgan said. Cities likely will have to request more buses than they did in other years. It’s likely, for exam- ple, that the city of Galveston will need to request 25 to 28 buses, when normally it would need only 15, he said. Once in Austin, people might notice the emergency shelters will be a little larger than normal, to allow people more space to spread out and sepa- rate, Morgan said. “They’ve got some school buildings and some large auditori- ums and some hotels,” Morgan said. Other governmental leaders and the Red Cross said plans were being made to perhaps avoid using those types of facilities at all, and rely instead on hotels and motels. At any rate, people also will be screened upon entrance to those emergency shelters, Morgan said. For everyone who evacuates, the biggest change they’ll notice is that everyone will need to take masks with them, Morgan said. People who are sheltering on their own will want to talk about spreading out among different friends and relatives’ homes, rather than many people going to one person’s house, Morgan said. Even better would be going to a hotel, where a family can easily shelter isolated from others, he said. The city will ensure people using the STEAR program have masks, too, Morgan said. “If you’re going to be on a bus, you’re going to need to wear a mask,” Morgan said. It will be important for people to ensure they have that supply ahead of time, if possi- ble, Morgan said. “Make sure that you have a supply of masks, having enough masks for a week or so before you come back,” Morgan said. Governments have plans to evacuate people with special needswww.gia-tx.com Commercial • Personal • Marine Windstorm • Flood • Auto Employee Benefits Reliable, Professional Service Before and After the Storm for 128 Years Friendswood 211 W. Edgewood Drive 281-442-1892 Galveston 6025 Heards Ln 409-740-1251 • A FAMILY OWNED INSURANCE AGENCY THAT CARES ABOUT YOUR NEEDS. • CALL US FOR ALL OF YOUR PERSONAL AND COMMERCIAL INSURANCE. • NO MATTER IF YOUR ACCOUNT IS LARGE OR SMALL, CUSTOMER SERVICE IS FIRST FOR ALL. www.heffernaninsuranceagency.com HEFFERNAN INSURANCE AGENCY 1703 Tremont Galveston, TX 77550 409-765-9011 213 South US Hwy 281, Ste E Johnson City, TX 78636 830-868-4017 HOMEOWNER WINDSTORM FLOOD FIRE AUTO COMMERCIAL BONDS 2020 | Hurricane Preparedness | The Daily News | 2324 | The Daily News | Hurricane Preparedness | 2020 By KATHRYN EASTBURN The Daily News Preparing to evacuate a hospital when a hurricane is headed toward Galveston County is a daunting task – potentially amplified this hurricane season by the presence of COVID-19. Mike Mastrangelo, director of institutional preparedness at the University of Texas Medical Branch, has been working since January with the COVID-19 Command Team at the medical branch and, in recent weeks, has been training his team on dealing with a complex disaster like a major hurricane during a COVID-19 flare up. But Mastrangelo was no stranger to a scenario like this. “For the past two years in our hurricane evacuation exercises, we’ve stipulated that while the hurricane evacuation is going on there’s a coincident disease outbreak,” Mastrangelo said. “We did that to stress the system.” Normal procedure is to take a given day, look at the patient census at the medical branch and calculate how many patients need to be relocated to a medical center elsewhere in the state. For the medical branch, normally there have been enough beds available in 11 hospitals in central Texas. But stipulating the possibility of a disease outbreak changed the normal picture. “We work with the Regional Trauma Advisory Council of southeast Texas and do exercises and planning with them and the council in the capitol area,” Mastrangelo said. “Stipulating that central Texas couldn’t provide enough beds because of the outbreak, a message would go out to the southeast council with the number and general type of patients to find the remaining beds.” Summer of 2020 marks the third year the team at the medical branch will have planned and exercised under the concept of a complex incident like a hurricane and a COVID-19 flare up. When Hurricane Ike hit in 2008, flooding the entire medical branch campus and causing emergency power outages, most patients were transferred to other hospitals by ground ambulance, some helicopters and some fixed-wing aircraft, Mastrangelo said. In addition to new buildings designed to better withstand major storms, the medical branch now has several ambulance buses equipped to evacuate more patients in a single vehicle. With COVID-19 patients, the buses would cohort infected patients and plan the use of personal protective equipment with personnel when calculating how many patients could fit on one ambulance bus, he said. “I think we’ve got some good plans in place,” Mastrangelo said. Early predictions are for an above average storm season, so an evacuation could be in the picture, he said. The worst-case scenario for this year’s exercises, based on flood modeling and modeling of the medical branch campuses, will be a Category 4 storm with a 17-foot storm surge and wind- Evacuating hospitals an especially tricky task with COVID-192020 | Hurricane Preparedness | The Daily News | 25 “We will do a variety of exercises on a hurricane with COVID-19 thrown on top, and maybe even some more complicating factors.” MIKE MASTRANGELO , director of institutional preparedness at the University of Texas Medical Branch driven debris damage. Planning data helps the team plan pre-landfall evacuations, post-landfall evacuations and scenarios to implement emergency protective measures in place. “In terms of personal protective equipment needed and transporting patients, we would follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance and our own infection control protocol,” Mastrangelo said. And although the medical branch communicates and coordinates with local authorities on the general population evacuation and evacuation of any medical, special or functional needs populations, Mastrangelo’s team would defer to the local health authority, Dr. Philip Keiser; the local ambulance authority; and the Texas Division of Emergency Management regional coordinator on specific plans regarding social distancing and use of personal protective equipment on evacuation buses or other vehicles, Mastrangelo said. “We will do a variety of exercises on a hurricane with COVID-19 thrown on top, and maybe even some more complicating factors,” he said. KEVIN M. COX/The Daily News file photo Helicopters land at UTMB’s John Sealy hospital on Sept. 23, 2008 in Galveston. The hospital was not fully operational for at least 60 days after Hurricane Ike. 26 | The Daily News | Hurricane Preparedness | 2020 By ANGELA WILSON The Daily News P reparing for hurricane season during a global pandemic is a new frontier for most of us. Each year between June 1 through Nov. 30, coastal resi- dents make plans to survive if and when a hurricane comes our way. Disaster kits should be filled with items such as food and water; personal items such as medications, toilet paper and paper towels; a first aid kit; and important documents like your ID, birth certificate, Social Security card and family photos. In this new age of COVID-19, however, crisis is different from shortages during/after a hurricane, said Carlos Peña, owner of Kleen Supply Company in Galves- ton. As a paper products distrib- utor, Peña argues the paper shortages created by the pandemic were caused more by panic buying and greater demand than interruptions in production and will settle over time, he said. “I don’t think a shortage of paper products would be a problem during hurricane season, as most are manufac- tured in the United States,” he said. “Although manufac- turers were caught off-guard with the pandemic, they’re operating at record high levels to get the supply back to normal. “And like paper goods, disinfectants and sanitizers are also in short supply right now, but production has been increased and manufacturers are hoping to catch up soon.” Fresh grocery items, includ- ing meat, vegetables and fruit have been short in supply for different reasons, Peña said. “That supply chain has been disrupted like a ripple effect with factories and processing plants closing, the transportation of goods was interrupted, and so on until it reaches the consumer,” Peña said. “However, preparing food supplies for a hurricane would mostly include nonper- ishable items, so I see no problem there.” Mark Morgan, chief of emergency management for the city of Galveston, isn’t anticipating any shortages of supplies, but wants to keep everyone focused on the up- coming hurricane season. “Make sure you have an emergency kit stocked with nonperishable food, drink- ing water, medications, extra masks, items for your pets, batteries and mobile phone chargers,” Morgan said. “It’s important to keep your fuel tanks full and have a current evacuation destination as well.” In addition to its emer- gency response team, the city of Texas City’s Office of Emergency Management has created a pandemic response team because of COVID-19 measures, said Tom Munoz, emergency manager. “Although we’re not an- ticipating any shortages, the pandemic has changed the way we do business normal- ly,” Munoz said. “Now we have to make sure that we have enough personal protec- tive equipment, so it’s kind of hard to gauge because this is a first for most of us.” The city, which has 55,000 residents, has 10,000 surgical masks and 110 gallons of hand sanitizer so far to help prepare for hurricane season, Munoz said. “We’re blessed to be able to be prepared and have people in place who have an un- derstanding on how to keep our residents safe,” Munoz said. “COVID-19 is definite- ly changing the way we do things.” The county’s largest city, League City, although cau- tiously optimistic, is always concerned about making sure it’s putting measures in place ahead of time to take care of its residents, said Ryan Edghill, emergency manage- ment coordinator. “Being prepared in general is always an issue each year, but the concern of COVID-19 issues has added to that preparation,” Edghill said. “We’ve stockpiled on person- al protection equipment and disinfectant and have gotten a lot of support from the state, too. “This season it’s more im- portant now to put those ad- ditional sanitation supplies in your hurricane kits. But we’re mitigating these new changes by preparing as much as we can.” Will there be a supply shortage during hurricane season? Jennifer Reynolds/ The Daily News file photo Jose Contreras stocks up on bottled water at Kroger in Galveston ahead of Hurricane Harvey in August 2017. The UFCU Insurance Services ® team is committed to helping you find just the right insurance company and policy for you. UFCU Has You Covered UFCU.org Prepare and protect what matters to you most before a hurricane strikes. Our experienced professionals can help you assess your unique situation, guide you through the process, and provide exclusive coverage for coastal residents. Visit us at UFCU.org/Insurance or call (888) 353-8042 to get a free, no obligation quote. Flood and Windstorm Homeowner and Renter Condominium and Mobile Home Autos, Motorcycles, Boats, and RVs When a Storm is in the Gulf..It's Too Late! Homeowners . Flood . Windstorm . Life . Commercial Business . Annuities . Long Term Care . Disability Income 2020 | Hurricane Preparedness | The Daily News | 2728 | The Daily News | Hurricane Preparedness | 2020 By JAMES LACOMBE The Daily News F or Galveston County homeowners, pur- chasing windstorm insurance provides a safety net against potential damage sustained to their property during hurricane season. Consumers must have windstorm insurance to cover losses that aren’t covered by some homeowner poli- cies along the coast, such as damage from hurricanes and tornadoes. Many mortgage providers also may require windstorm insurance as a condition in issuing a home loan, Texas Windstorm Insurance Associ- ation spokeswoman Jennifer Armstrong said. “It is important for prop- erty owners to have wind- storm insurance coverage and, in some cases, flood insurance in addition to their homeowners or commercial insurance policy so that their property is fully protected if a catastrophic hurricane hits the Texas coast,” Armstrong said. “Many insurers exclude windstorm and hail coverage in their homeowners and commercial policies in TWIA’s designated coverage area on the Texas coast.” The association provides windstorm insurance for property owners in the Texas coastal counties who are unable to obtain this cover- age in the private market. It does not provide coverage for flood damage, but flood insurance may be required to be eligible for a wind policy. As of March 31, the asso- ciation had 57,173 insurance policies in Galveston County and a total of 187,189 policies in the coastal counties of Texas. These figures do not include windstorm insur- ance provided by the private market. There are 28,608 private market windstorm policies in Galveston County, and 185,218 in coastal counties, Texas Department of Insur- ance spokesman Jerry Hagins said. “TWIA cannot offer a wind- storm policy once a storm appears in the Gulf of Mexi- co, so we encourage coastal residents to review their insurance coverage needs be- fore hurricane season starts,” Armstrong said. “If changes to your insurance coverage are needed, plan ahead and don’t wait until the last minute.” As coastal residents pre- pare for hurricane season, the association encourages its policyholders to consider the following steps. First, pre-register in the claims center at www.TWIA. org. This will save policyhold- ers time after a storm if they need to file a claim. By using the claims center, policyholders can report new claims directly to the association 24 hours a day, communicate directly with its claims staff, check the status of existing claims, and view and submit claims documents and images. Second, make sure policies are paid and in effect and have the right level of cover- age for the property. Chang- es to policies can be made through an insurance agent, if needed. Payments also can be submitted through an agent for policy renewals, and re- cent legislative changes now allow payments to be mailed directly to the association to renew policies. Windstorm insurance needed to cover hurricane losses Stuart Villanueva/ The Daily News file photo Frances Maloney searches through debris outside of her daughter-in-law’s flood-damaged house in Dickinson after Hurricane Harvey in 2017. 2020 | Hurricane Preparedness | The Daily News | 29 From staff reports O ne of the most important items needed to survive and recover from a hurricane is information. For 178 years, The Galves- ton County Daily News has been the region’s top news source for local infor- mation on everything from evacuation calls to recovery efforts after the storm. Information from The Daily News is available in print, online, social media, television and radio. Much has changed since Hurricane Ike made landfall in 2008. In particular for The Daily News, information was provided not just by the printed edition of the newspaper and online at galv news.com, but the staff’s use of social media provided needed information for residents before, during and after the storm. Reporters’ tweets and posts became the lifeline for many Galveston Coun- ty residents. That will continue in the event of another Ike-like storm. Updates, as well as vital information, will be available online at galvnews. com. In the event of a storm, news and information on galvnews.com will be available to all readers regardless of subscription status. Subscribers benefit because they will receive regular email updates and breaking news alerts. To get instant updates from reporters and editors who will be in the field, make sure you like The Daily News’ Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ galvnews and follow its Twitter feed at www.twitter.com/galvnews. Readers can help in the coverage by making public postings of news tips, photos, videos and questions to their Facebook or Twitter accounts using the hashtags #GalvNews. Thanks to the vast reach of Houston television and radio outlets, The Daily News also has long-standing partner- ships with KHOU-TV Channel 11 and News Radio 740 AM KTRH to provide regular updates on Galveston County storm and recovery news. Because a storm can disrupt home delivery of the printed edition of The Daily News and because many of the newspaper’s readers may have evacu- ated before a major storm, the printed edition will be available at select drop-off locations across Galveston County. A listing of those locations will be provided and announced once the storm has passed. Stay connected with The Daily News How to handle your subscription during a hurricane evacuation • During a mandatory evacua- tion, all deliveries will be halted. It is not necessary to call to stop your newspaper delivery. • During a voluntary evacua- tion, you should call in to place your newspaper delivery on hold. Upon your return, you can email or call to resume delivery. • While evacuated, you can stay up-to-date by visiting www. galvnews.com and following The Daily News on Facebook and Twitter. • Activate your digital access before a storm. This will ensure you can view all of the exclusive updates, stories and photos available on www.galvnews. com with your computer, laptop, smartphone or tablet. • Once the mandatory evacu- ation has been lifted, The Daily News will work vigorously to resume your delivery. • The most efficient method to contact the circulation depart- ment after a storm is through email. For assistance to activate your digital access or for general inquires regarding your sub- scription, contact the circulation department at 409-683-5260 or circulation@galvnews.com.Next >