SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. – Hurricane season officially begins Saturday, and leaders in Seminole County are urging residents to prepare.
“We’ve all heard this is going to be a supercharged hurricane season,” said Emergency Manager Alan Harris. “We want everybody to prepare just like we are preparing today.”
Friday, the county invited News 6 inside its Emergency Operations Center as it held a training exercise. Every year the county hosts more than 40 agencies and simulates what their response would be like if a major hurricane hit.
“We really believe this is important,” Harris said. “Planning and training is where it’s at because it’s not a matter of if, it is really a matter of when a hurricane will come here to the central Florida area.”
Seminole County experienced significant impacts from Hurricane Irma in 2017 and Hurricane Ian in 2022. Power outages and flooding were concerns during both storms.
Harris said both experiences help the county prepare for the upcoming storm season.
“For Hurricane Ian, we learned quite a few things,” Harris said. “One of those was points of distribution. We need to put food, water, tarps, those types of commodities in areas that may have a challenge getting to certain locations. We now have a hub and spoke model here in Seminole County.”
Harris said the county has also spent time enhancing medical services after Ian.
“As we enhance medical services holistically, more people are going home with vents and traches, and we saw that during Hurricane Ian,” Harris said. “People that live very comfortably in their homes now they have vents and traches and other types of medical apparatus that they need to have power and they want to go to an emergency shelter. So, we’re making sure that we have ample nursing staff and ample power there to accommodate that.”
Hurricane Ian caused record flooding across Seminole County. News 6 visited neighborhoods that experienced flooding as they had never seen before, including Lake Harney, Little Wekiva River and St. Johns River.
Many families had several feet of water inside of their homes. It took weeks to dry out.
The county has been working on several mitigation projects and applying on behalf of homeowners for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) hazard mitigation grants. The money can be used to elevate homes or buy them and demolish them.
“What does that do for all of us? It, of course, helps us all as insurance companies are unfortunately more and more leaving the state of Florida. We want to prevent that from happening,” Harris said. “So, if we know that a home is damaged over and over and over again in every storm let’s get them out of the flood plane.”
Last spring, county commissioners received a list of 15 properties and what projects are planned for them.
Some homes near Lake Harney, Lake Jesup, the St. John’s River and parts of Altamonte Springs will be bought and demolished, reconstructed or elevated. Other areas have erosion control and even a retaining wall planned.
Harris said if a hurricane hits Seminole County they are as ready as they can be.
Hurricane season starts on June 1.
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