MONROE COUNTY EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT PRESENTED WITH OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT AWARD AT 2018 NATIONAL HURRICANE CONFERENCE

ORLANDO, FL – Monroe County Emergency Management was presented with the “Outstanding Achievement in Emergency Management” Award on March 28 at the 2018 National Hurricane Conference in Orlando.

The award is given for specific outstanding and innovative achievement in any hurricane-related activity, which may serve as a model to others. Monroe County was one of three county emergency management departments to receive this national award. The others were Collier and Lee counties, also in Florida.

“Monroe County Emergency Management was chosen because they recognized the risk, recognized their inability to deal internally with the risk, and spent many, many years setting up preparedness with mutual aid agreements,” said John Wilson, former Director of Lee County Emergency Management, who was chair of the National Hurricane Conference’s Awards Committee.

“All this work took time and effort and was done when the sun was shining,” Wilson added. “Monroe County had sound leadership in place when they needed to pull the trigger [with the mutual aid agreements]. They also implemented effective evacuations and efforts to take care of people at risk. They did well.”

Emergency Management’s Submission:

Hurricane Irma posted significant challenges to Florida’s coastal communities. Its size and forecasted track forced 54 of its 67 counties to issue evacuation orders. Nowhere was this threat more evident and the long-term preparedness efforts paying off than in Monroe, Collier and Lee counties.

Monroe County Emergency Management faced the daunting task of dealing with the onslaught of the first Category four hurricane to affect it in 57 years. With only a staff of four and under the direction of Director Martin Senterfitt and Shannon Davis-Weiner, the program relied on previous innovative planning efforts and use of the ICS management principles to maintain management oversight.

Combined, these efforts resulted in the successful ordered evacuation beginning 72 hours ahead of the storm’s ultimate path, executed plans to shelter evacuees from the Keys in shelters in Miami-Dade County, and moving both hospital patients and inmates in correctional facilities to the mainland. They also moved their EOC [Emergency Operations Center] because it was in the storm’s path to a safer location in the Northern Keys. Recognizing that they were resource thin and facing resounding problems, the program made the best use of incoming resources from Incident Management Teams to help the [approximately] 10,000 residents remaining in the Keys.

Collier and Lee County Emergency Management programs also faced unprecedented storm surge threats, according to the probabilistic storm surge inundation map products put forth by the National Hurricane Center. This threat, combined with critical sheltering and fuel shortfalls resulting from earlier evacuations along Florida’s East Coast, resulted in both counties developing sheltering and mass care operations far exceeding planned-for resource levels. Yet through their pre-planning efforts both programs were able to evacuate and shelter those needing it.

Collier County, under the direction of Dan Summers, had developed portable “go packs” that they were able to quickly transfer to pre-identified buildings to serve as shelters; their efforts housed 22,000 people in 27 shelters. Lee County, under the direction of Lee Mayfield, housed 34,000 people and 3,600 pets at 15 sites, using the combined resources of the American Red Cross and staff from Lee County and the local school district.

These programs exemplify the concept that extended and innovative preparedness planning combined with sound leadership that recognizes the need to adjust and adapt – works. Evacuation and sheltering planning in these three communities were decades in the making. Effective leaders were also in place to make the critical decisions to safeguard the lives of those at risk. It is for these reasons that these programs should be recognized for their outstanding preparedness efforts by this Conference.

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