TAMPA, Fla. - More agencies are communicating and collaborating better as a team preparing for the next hurricane response, the chief of the National Guard Bureau said here today.
Flanked by the commander of Northern Command and senior Department of Homeland Security, Coast Guard and other leaders, Air Force Gen. Craig McKinley said hurricane preparation is steadily improving.
"The more players we get at this table, the better we all are going to be," McKinley said.
McKinley and Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander, Northern Command are scheduled to brief President Obama on the workshop, and the week's work here is expected to be reflected in hurricane plans.
"This puts us in a very good position to be prepared for, to anticipate those requirements that might arise as storms come to our shore," Renuart said.
The Atlantic hurricane season is June 1 through Nov. 30.
The weeklong national States and Territories Hurricane Response Workshop co-sponsored by the National Guard Bureau and Northern Command wrapped up here Friday.
As domestic response leaders met here, operations underway in support of the people of Haiti and in anticipation of the Winter Olympics highlighted the challenges responders face.
"We did get that wake-up reminder last week that large events can happen with no notice," said Air Force Maj. Gen. William Etter, the National Guard Bureau's domestic operations director.
Other factors that leaders anticipated as they met here this week included a tightening federal and state fiscal environment and the possibility that up to 40 governors could change as the result of elections in the next year.
Leadership changes mean new administrations that must quickly get up to speed on emergency response.
"True integration ... has gone on and continues to need to go on in the future to protect our citizens from all things - hurricanes, terrorism, ice storms - and to work together to protect those who are not U.S. citizens, as we've seen" in Haiti, said Juliette Kayyem, DHS assistant secretary.
National Guard and other leaders spent the week here talking about emergency management agreements between the states, what resources are available for responses and coordinating the responses of multiple federal, state, territorial and local agencies.
They discussed aeromedical evacuation plans, search and rescue and communications. Participants also addressed issues such as generating the necessary forces in each state to respond to storms, sharing equipment and conducting evacuations and search and rescues.
They heard from states battered by past hurricanes that have learned in the crucible of real-world events. Texas and Louisiana now have aeromedical evacuation plans that are a potential model for the nation.
Planners conducted a table-top exercise responding to a hypothetical worst-case scenario slow-moving Category 5 hurricane that makes landfall just north of Fort Lauderdale as a Category 4 storm, crosses Florida just south of Lake Okeechobee, causing breaches in the levees surrounding the massive inland body of freshwater before the storm exits near Tampa as a Category 2 hurricane - then turns north in the Gulf of Mexico and threatens the Panhandle.
Planners estimated such a storm might damage or destroy a million homes, leaving more than four million people without water. Florida's population mushroomed from about 13 million in 1990 to about 19 million today - and 90 percent live within 30 miles of the coast.
"There's been a tremendous improvement in the coordination at the local level, at the state level and the ... federal level," said Army Maj. Gen. Bennett C. Landreneau, the adjutant general of the Louisiana National Guard. Louisiana was one of the states hardest-hit by Hurricane Katrina. "Improvements in ... interoperable communications ... have really helped us as we respond to all hazardous events in our nation."
McKinley said emergency assistance compacts between states have improved since Katrina. Hurricanes can have effects beyond the borders of the hurricane states, he said, noting that other states might receive thousands of people displaced by the storm.
"It is a unified effort now," he said, "and I see vastly improved levels of interest, support and cooperation."
"We've seen some great improvements in what our capabilities are," said Army Brig. Gen. Donald Tyre, director of the Florida National Guard's joint staff.
The hurricane workshop started with a couple of southeastern states focused on an impending hurricane season six years ago and this year grew to several hundred representatives from 33 states and territories and federal agencies.
The hurricane response workshop was hosted by the Florida National Guard and included representatives from the DHS, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard and other federal, state and territorial agencies.
Kayyem stressed that personal preparedness is one of the keys to hurricane preparation. "We have been lucky the last two years," she said. "The more people can help themselves, then [servicemembers] can help those who can't help themselves or are in dire need."