Need shelter this hurricane season? Miami-Dade to require masks, but not proof of vaccine
The most active hurricane season in recorded history and a global pandemic made 2020 a hard act to follow, but experts say the outlook is better for both crises this year.
The six-month hurricane season begins June 1, and the biggest change appears to be the widespread availability of the COVID-19 vaccine.
With caseloads on the downswing and vaccination rates rising, FEMA, Florida and Miami-Dade County have shifted their strategies for sheltering evacuees from both hurricanes and COVID. And their message is the same: Vaccination is hurricane preparation.
For the annual June 1 storm press conference, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava went through the three typical elements of county advice for hurricanes: Stay Informed. Be Ready and Make a Plan.
“This year,” she said, “the fourth is ‘Get a Shot.’”
FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell stressed the importance of vaccination at a news conference in Miami’s National Hurricane Center headquarters last month.
“The more people that are vaccinated the safer we’ll be in community shelters,” she said.
Frank Rollason, Miami-Dade’s head of emergency management, echoed the sentiment.
“That’s an added protection for you because you’re in close quarters. We don’t want to have a super-spreader event at one of our shelters,” he said.
Of course, he added, a new bill signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis banning “vaccine passports” complicates the county’s plans to pull back on some of its COVID protection procedures this year.
Rollason said the county will continue screening evacuees for symptoms and exposure at the door, but staffers will not ask people if they’ve been vaccinated.
“We can’t ask them if they’ve had the vaccine,” he said. “Because the governor said we can’t ask.”
Instead, Miami-Dade will require everyone who shelters with the county to wear a mask. Anyone who refuses will be sent to a cordoned-off area of the shelter with everyone else who won’t wear a mask. The two groups will also be fed meals separately.
“We’re not gonna tell them they can’t come into the inn; they’re welcome, but we’re going to separate everybody,” he said.
NOAA’s predictions for this year’s season call for another active season but fewer storms than last year’s record-breaking run. The agency suggests there could be 13 to 20 named storms, 6 to 10 of which could strengthen to hurricanes and 3 to 5 becoming Category 3 or higher.
The first name is already checked off the list. Tropical Storm Ana briefly formed near Bermuda earlier this month, making it the seventh year in a row with a named storm forming ahead of the official start to the season.
Luckily, Florida was spared a test run of its new pandemic-era sheltering strategy last year, with the exception of fewer than 200 evacuees in Palm Beach County for Hurricane Isaias.
In 2020, FEMA and the state recommended that counties send evacuees into hotels and motels to spread out and avoid infection — a plan that Miami-Dade scrapped mid-season due to complications. Now hotels are back, but only for people infected with COVID-19 or recently exposed.
Rollason said the state hasn’t yet shared the list of Miami-Dade hotels that are participating, although it can’t be long considering that only a handful of hotels in the county are outside of evacuation zones.
Miami-Dade’s plan for this season involves opening double the amount of shelters necessary if a Category 1 or 2 storm strikes so that evacuees can spread out, Rollason said. If a stronger storm is imminent, social distancing goes out the window to ensure everyone who needs a room can get one.
Florida’s hopes of providing rapid COVID testing at hurricane shelters never materialized last year, but this year, Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said the state has them ready for counties to request.
Guthrie also said Florida’s stockpile of personal protective gear includes more than 14 million gloves, 250,000 face shields, 40,000 pairs of goggles, almost 100,000 bottles of hand sanitizer and more than 13 million face masks — a significantly smaller reserve than last year at the pandemic’s peak.
Florida Power & Light also plans to hold onto some of last year’s precautions, including social distancing at staging sites, more and smaller staging sites and health screenings for restoration staff.
“As we all think about the brighter days ahead with COVID-19, it’s really really important for us to understand that pandemic or not, it only takes one hurricane to upend life as we know it,” Eric Silagy, president and CEO of FPL, said earlier this month at a company press conference. “All of us as Floridians have a fundamental responsibility to prepare for hurricane season.”
Miami Herald reporters Doug Hanks and Michelle Marchante contributed to this report.
This story was originally published June 1, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
