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Deadly Seasons Amplify Turnout of Storm Experts

Posted on: Monday, 10 April 2006, 15:00 CDT

By Maya Bell, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Apr. 10--A who's who of experts will converge in Orlando today to discuss one of Florida's least favorite but most important topics: hurricanes.

With 2,000 participants and scores of training sessions, workshops and speakers, the 2006 National Hurricane Conference is shaping up to be the largest, most jampacked gathering in the meeting's 28-year history.

But that comes as no surprise to David Tait. The conference's executive director says attendance at this annual rite of spring is directly related to the previous year's hurricane season.

The more devastating the prior season, the more people feel compelled to plunk down the $350 registration fee to attend the five-day event.

So, Tait said, it was predictable that the 2005 season, the most active and destructive on record, would generate unprecedented interest in this year's conference at the Rosen Centre Hotel.

"After Hurricane Andrew, it was really big, too," Tait recalled.

Though none of the sessions are open to the public, residents should benefit from the conclave. After all, this is the place where the front-line folks who help communities prepare, endure and recover from hurricanes discuss what went right and what went wrong in previous years so they can do better the next time.

Those people include emergency managers and rescuers, meteorologists and hydrologists, evacuation planners and shelter operators, engineers and builders, insurers and utility staffers, health-care specialists and volunteers, ham-radio operators and the news media.

Failures reported

There will be no shortage of subjects this year, given the blistering report by U.S. House investigators released in February. It blamed failures at every level of government, from President Bush on down, for the disorganized and sluggish response that cost more lives and compounded the misery from Hurricane Katrina's devastating assault on Mississippi and Louisiana in August.

Focus on FEMA

Not surprisingly, the beleaguered Federal Emergency Management Agency, which bore the brunt of the criticism, will be in the conference spotlight. Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security secretary, and R. David Paulison, acting director of FEMA, are scheduled to address Wednesday's session.

Neither man, however, will embrace the comments made at last year's conference, in New Orleans, by former FEMA Director James Lee Witt.

Just five months before Katrina submerged and all but emptied that host city, the Clinton appointee told conferees that moving FEMA under Homeland Security, the mammoth agency created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks in the United States, would hamper its ability to respond to hurricanes and other natural disasters.

Paulison's predecessor, Michael Brown, who resigned amid scathing criticism of his Katrina performance, held similar views and made them clear before and after his departure. But despite growing pressure from Congress, Chertoff and the Bush administration have remained steadfast in their support for keeping FEMA in place.

Wednesday's session at the conference also will feature some of the biggest names in the hurricane-warning, -preparedness and -recovery business. They include: Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center; Jack McGuire, interim president and CEO of the American Red Cross; Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad Allen, the chief federal official over the Katrina disaster; and Craig Fugate, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

In the days before and the day after Wednesday's assembly, conferees also will attend training seminars, workshops and sessions on almost every conceivable hurricane topic, from evacuation decision-making to animal rescues and mental-health needs.

Global-warming debate

The conference will close Friday with another general session featuring one of the hottest debates in the meteorological world -- whether recent increases in hurricane activity are because of global warming or part of a natural cycle -- and one of the conference's perennial big draws, William Gray. The Colorado State University professor who pioneered the science of long-range hurricane forecasting will discuss his predictions for 2006, which call for another very active hurricane season.

But conference director Tait and just about everybody else in the hurricane business hope Gray is wrong and that the 2006 season will be quiet -- even if that means less interest in the 2007 conference.

Given its locale, though, that seems unlikely. Next spring, the conference returns to New Orleans.

Maya Bell can be reached at mbell@orlandosentinel.com or 305-810-5003.

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Copyright (c) 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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