Dry weather can mean wildfires
This year’s extensive drought and the freezes in January and February have created an ideal situation for wildfires. Something as small as a carelessly discarded cigarette butt can ignite a blaze which could consume hundreds of acres and prove deadly.
Much of Florida’s ecosystem has adapted to wildfires, and many species of plants and animals rely on periodic wildfires to keep their habitat healthy. However, as development encroached into these natural habitats, wildfires became a greater threat to lives and property. If you live near a park, preserve or other wooded area, consider preparing your home to reduce property loss and improve your chances of survival. Some important tips include:
- Keep a 50-foot zone around your home clear of highly flammable plants, and remove dead branches, fallen leaves or other fuel
- Prune any tree limbs that overhang your home’s roof
- Keep your yard mowed regularly
- Consider fire-resistant building materials when replacing roof shingles, soffits, fascia or other exterior materials
- Dispose of cigarette butts, charcoal or other flammable items properly
- Develop a family disaster plan and be sure everyone knows what to do
- Stay tuned to your local media for any fire-awareness updates
Visit Emergency Management’s website at www.pinellascounty.org/emergency or the state’s Emergency Management office at www.floridadisaster.org/bpr/EMTOOLS/wildfire/wildfire.htm for more information on wildfire preparation.
You can also monitor the most up-to-date drought conditions at the U.S. Drought Monitor’s Florida page at www.drought.unl.edu/dm/DM_state.htm?FL,SE.
We need your help
In order to meet federal requirements, Pinellas County has to update its Local Mitigation Strategy every few years. Following a major disaster, the long process of recovery and rebuilding begins. A natural human response to a disaster is to question, “Why did this happen?” Then, ultimately we begin to ask, “How can we prevent this from happening again?” In Emergency Management, this is called mitigation - actions that we can take before a disaster or when we rebuild after a disaster that will reduce our risk of property damage or loss of life in the future.
The LMS provides a framework for us to carefully analyze the threats – both natural and man-made – which we face in our community and how we will address them. In this process we focus on four key areas:
Assessing our risk - What dangers do we face?
Reducing our risk – How can we prevent disasters or make our homes and businesses more disaster resistant?
Deciding which actions to take – Where can we make improvements in our disaster planning which will have the greatest impact?
Recovering and rebuilding – When a disaster does come, which projects and improvements will be completed to reduce our vulnerability for the next time.
The Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council and Pinellas County Emergency Management are planning a series of focus groups with a maximum of 20 participants at each session to seek public feedback on the current plan and how it can be improved. If you have an interest in emergency matters and would like to participate, please e-mail tiovino@pinellascounty.org with the subject line “LMS Focus Group.” Your name and contact information will be retained and you will be contacted once the meeting dates are selected.
For more information on the existing Pinellas County LMS, visit www.tampabaydisaster.org/pinellaslms/index.shtml.
Doors demand attention
When looking at your home for its hurricane readiness, it might be easy to overlook your doors. It’s not difficult to do – you rely on your doors to be strong enough to keep people you don’t want in, outside, while looking stylish.
However, doors can be vulnerable to high winds and impact from storm-blown debris.
In order to determine how vulnerable your doors are, take a close look at them. Is your door a single or double door? Single doors present a much smaller profile to the wind and are subject to less force. If your door is a double door, be sure to attach a deadbolt or some other mechanical latch mechanism on one door to gain additional bracing.
Does your door swing in to your home or out? Outward swinging doors have an easier time resisting force because the hinges help secure the door in its frame. Inward swinging doors should have a deadbolt which reaches deeply into the door frame.
Does your door have adequate weather stripping around it? If this is missing or in bad repair, it’s important to have it installed or replaced.
Does your door have a window (known sometimes as a ‘light’) in it or surrounding it? Those windows are just as vulnerable as the other windows in your home and should be covered to protect them from flying debris.
And while it should be obvious, sliding glass doors need to be protected just as if they were windows. Just because they slide and people walk through them doesn’t make them any less vulnerable to windborne debris. In fact, they are even more vulnerable, given their large size.
For more information on how to prepare your home to withstand hurricane-force winds, visit the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes website at www.flash.org.
Storms in History
The 1966 Tampa Tornado Family,
April 4, 1966
Florida is one of the most tornado-prone states in the country. However, most of the tornados the state experiences are rather small storms on the Fujita Scale of tornado intensity.
That wasn’t the case back in early April 1966 when an extremely strong thunderstorm came crashing through the Tampa Bay area. As the storm passed over Pinellas County, it spawned two intense tornados.
The first was a strong F4 storm with winds estimated between 206 and 260 miles per hour. It touched down near Largo and damaged 40 homes in Pinellas before crossing the bay and doing tremendous damage in Tampa. The storm later exited into the Atlantic near Merritt Island.
A second F3 tornado touched down near the Sunshine Skyway and cut a very similar path across the state all the way to Cocoa. The storm was strong enough to lift a 23-foot-long trailer and an automobile.
All told, the storms claimed 11 victims and injured 530, with damage estimates of approximately $25 million. After the storms passed, some looting was reported in Hillsborough and Polk counties, and 200 national guardsmen were deployed to help quell the unrest.
While these storm paths were probably not caused by one continuous tornado, they did appear to have been caused by a series of tornadoes generated from one violent thunderstorm cell. This series of tornadoes and downburst is known in meteorology as a tornado family.
To read more about the 1966 Tampa Tornado Family event, visit the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Tampa_tornado_family.
We take our show on the road
Hurricane season is coming, and if you’re looking for a presentation for your homeowner’s association, civic group, church, business or other gathering, Pinellas County can help.
Currently, there are six hurricane-related presentations that can be requested:
- Hurricane 101 - What are hurricanes? How do they form? What are their effects? Get the basics on these dangerous tropical storms.
- Preparing your Pets - Remember that Fluffy and Fido need to be planned for as well. Learn some common-sense tips on how to prepare your pet for hurricane season.
- Does it Take a Category 5? - Everyone in Florida worries about the next ‘big one.’ But does a hurricane have to be a monster to do major damage? See what damage storms of all Saffir-Simpson categories are able to do.
- Becoming Storm Savvy - While we are still in the hurricane preseason, now is an excellent time to learn how you can prepare yourself to prevent panic if we are affected by a storm. From learning how to put together a survival kit without busting your budget to planning ahead for evacuations, tips are offered for everyone.
- Busting Hurricane Myths - Learn the dangers of some commonly held beliefs when hurricanes approach. Not only will you find the real story, you may also save your life if the big one comes.
- Hurricanes for Kids - Hurricane season can be a very trying time for younger family members. By using experiments and easy-to-understand language, your youngsters can find some control over these scary situations.
This year, Pinellas County Emergency Management is partnering once again with the Pinellas County Library Cooperative for a series of talks. The schedule for the upcoming hurricane education sessions is:
- April 6, 2 p.m. – Hurricane 101
Pinellas Park Public Library, 7770 52nd St., Pinellas Park (727) 541-0718 - April 13, 6:30 p.m. – Does it Take a Category 5?
Largo Public Library, 120 Central Park Drive, Largo (727) 587-6715 - May 5, 7 p.m. – Hurricane 101
Dunedin Public Library, 223 Douglas Ave., Dunedin (727) 298-3080 - May 9, 11 a.m. – Becoming Storm Savvy
Oldsmar Public Library, 400 St. Petersburg Drive E., Oldsmar (813) 749-1178 - May 9, 2 p.m. – Hurricane 101
Tarpon Springs Public Library, 138 E. Lemon St., Tarpon Springs (727) 943-4922 - May 11, 7 p.m. – Preparing your Pets
St. Pete Beach Public Library, 365 73rd Ave., St Pete Beach (727) 363-9238 - May 11, 6:30 p.m. – Preparing your Pets
Largo Public Library, 120 Central Park Drive, Largo (727) 587-6715
To schedule a speaker, call Pinellas County’s Speakers Bureau at (727) 464-3000. Remember, knowledge is power. We can’t do anything about the weather, but by knowing what to do when bad weather threatens, you can gain control over your personal safety.
What does THAT mean?
I’ve gotta jet. Cool your jets. The jet age. Jets have been part of our communication since they were first invented in the 1940s and perfected in the 1950s. But one discovery that even predates the invention of jet airplanes is what’s known now as the jet stream.
The jet stream blows in a narrow band about 36,000 feet (more than six miles) high at the boundaries between air masses of different temperatures. There are six jet streams around the world: both the northern and southern hemispheres each have an arctic jet, a subpolar jet (which meanders between 30° and 70° latitude) and a subtropical jet (meandering between 20° and 50° latitude). All three northern hemisphere jet streams move south in the winter and north in the summer, exerting influence over the weather. The subpolar jet is typically far more powerful than the others, with wind speeds reaching as high as 250 miles per hour.
These powerful high-level winds can steer storm systems and can add greatly to the intensity of storms. The Storm of the Century which hit the east coast of the United States in March 1993 got a significant boost in strength from an unusually powerful subpolar jet which blew over the Gulf of Mexico.
The Imperial Japanese army first observed these very powerful winds and used them to carry fire-bomb-containing balloons across the Pacific Ocean to attack the United States during World War II. Several hundred of these balloons were launched from the Japanese shoreline, crossed the 5,000 miles of open Pacific Ocean in as little as three days and landed as far east as Michigan. While they may have crossed the Pacific successfully, they had limited effectiveness as a weapon. Still, six people out on a picnic in Oregon were killed while investigating a balloon bomb that had landed. You can read more about this at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon.
Today, commercial airlines plan their routes accordingly during long distance travel. East to west routes ride in the jet stream to gain a speed boost, while west to east flights avoid the jet stream to lessen head winds.
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