How much food do you need ahead of Dorian? Florida and Miami-Dade County disagree
As Hurricane Dorian threatens Florida, there’s a disagreement over just how much food and water residents should have stockpiled for the storm.
Miami-Dade, the county with the most people at risk from the storm, continues to promote a request that residents have enough groceries before a storm to last 72 hours.
“You need to have three days’ worth of food. You need to have three days’ worth of water,” Mayor Carlos Gimenez said at a morning press conference Thursday at County Hall in downtown Miami, the governmental headquarters for Florida’s most populous county. “As much as possible, try to be self-sufficient for three days because we may not be able to get to you.”
For this storm season, Florida is recommending people have more than twice that amount of food and water on hand.
“Every Florida resident should have seven days of supplies, including food, water and medicine, and should have a plan in case of disaster,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday in declaring a state of emergency for Dorian’s approach.
The spread captures Florida’s new pessimism when it comes to storm recovery in some of the more rural areas of the state. State emergency managers announced the revised advice on provisions in May, citing difficulties in getting to homes after Hurricane Michael hit the Panhandle as a devastating Category 5 storm in October 2018.
“After Michael, the state found FEMA could not get to people in three days. Sometimes it was four or five,” said DeSantis spokeswoman Helen Ferré. “Michael forced us to look at things differently. The devastation presented new challenges in the Panhandle.”
Miami-Dade’s official hurricane guide actually follows the DeSantis model. The county’s 2019 Hurricane Guide urges homes to create a storm kit that includes a “7-day supply of non-perishable foods” and water. But in prepared remarks to the public, Gimenez only calls for three days of food and water.
The state’s new request for seven days of provisions shifted the official advice from “three to seven” days of food and water that the administration of then-Gov. Rick Scott promoted ahead of Hurricane Irma in 2017. FEMA’s website also says to have “at least three days” worth of food and water ahead of a hurricane, and the three-day request has been Miami-Dade’s public message for years.
“It’s always been ‘the first 72 are on you,’ ” said Frank Rollason, the county’s emergency director.
There’s no perfect target for provisions, said Craig Fugate, a former FEMA chief who was Florida’s emergency director during the hurricane barrage that hit the state in 2004 and 2005. “Three, five, seven days — take your pick,” he said in an email Thursday. “I don’t know if there is a right number.”
Maurice Kemp, a deputy mayor and Miami-Dade’s acting fire chief, said he doubted many people would end up purchasing seven days of food and water ahead of a storm but that the higher number might encourage healthier stockpiles . “It doesn’t hurt to suggest,” he said.
This story was originally published August 29, 2019 at 3:23 PM.