NFPA Journal - November/December 2017 - 35

CHIEF DROZD

Our calls went up 450 percent at the
height of the storm. We went to single-unit responses and started stacking
some of the lower priority calls. As the
storm progressed, we put [the decision of whether to respond] on the
field commanders to make the assessments within their individual areas.
Because we cover 1,000 square miles
or so, winds can be much different in
one area than another. Allowing units
to respond paid dividends in certain
areas-we have
helmet-cam footage of our units rescuing people out of chest-deep water
in their homes in the middle of the
night. This being Florida, there were
alligators, and some of the crews were
dodging moccasins in the water-not
the ones that you wear on your feet, the
ones that slither.
Days after the storm passed, on September 13, eight elderly residents died
in a nursing facility in Hollywood, Florida, north of Miami. The storm knocked
out the facility's air-conditioning and
it's believed the residents died from
excessive heat. The event sent shockwaves through the state, much of which
had no electricity and a large elderly
population.

NEWSCOM

CHIEF DOWNEY

This issue is going to be part of our
after-action assessment. We spend a
lot of time on the front end sheltering
people from the imminent disaster, but
there is the ongoing disaster afterwards
and we're not really thinking about sustainability with the sheltering.
After the storm, everyone wants to
close the shelters, get everyone out of
there, get the schools operational, but
we have this huge elderly population
to think about. After the storm passes
through, you're dealing with buildings
that are 100-plus degrees with relative
humidity in excess of 100 percent.
What do we do with these populations?
They aren't in evacuation areas, they
aren't threatened with inundation from
water, yet now their lives are threatened because there is in some cases no
running water or electricity. It's not just
nursing homes. We have hundreds and

SWAMPY HEAT A woman talks to police as she walks through a street in a
neighborhood of Orlando following Hurricane Irma.

hundreds of high-rise buildings with
insufficient water pressure, no power in
the building, no elevators. We devoted
so many resources to just bringing
food, water, and supplies up these
high-rises for these folks. It's a disaster-management planning issue. You're
really not back to normal until you at
least have power in some of these vital
areas.
Another after-storm issue encountered
was carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning,
Downey said, a result of inadequately
ventilated generators.

unconscious. It was an 8-year-old that
called 911. After that we ramped up the
CO messaging. We still responded to
more than 50 CO calls during that time,
but there were no more deaths.
In the end, a good plan that takes into
account many scenarios and includes
redundancies in communication, power,
fuel, and clearly stated operational
directives is key to effective management and response when a major event
like a hurricane occurs, Downey said.
At the same time, maintaining flexibility
and having a nimble workforce is also
crucial.

CHIEF DOWNEY

We kept putting out safety messages on
carbon monoxide, but we still had three
fatalities. It was a huge issue this time.
After Hurricane Andrew, which hit
Florida in 1992, nobody had generators,
but this time everyone had generators.
CHIEF DROZD

We had press briefings twice a day,
which is where we did a lot of safety
messaging, and we also got messages
out through social media. Even though
we were messaging on carbon monoxide, we had three fatalities. It was a
family of six. When we arrived, three
of them were dead and three were

CHIEF DOWNEY

After Hurricane Andrew, we expanded
a hurricane procedure that was then
about four pages long-it's now a book,
one that everybody has to understand
and use. We train with it every single
year leading up to hurricane season,
and it definitely paid off...I'm proud of
the people on my department, too-a
lot of them had to take on nontraditional roles, and they performed
admirably for the most part, not knowing what's going on with their own
homes and families.
JESSE ROMAN is associate editor of NFPA Journal.

N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

| 35
http://nfpa.org/journal
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - November/December 2017
