How to Prepare for the Coming Hurricane Season of 2006 and Beyond

Even as Hurricane Epsilon recedes into memory way out in the North Atlantic, most of the residents of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of the United States are sighing with relief as the busiest hurricane season ever recorded comes to a welcome end. For the next six months, people who live anywhere between Eastport, Maine to Brownsville, Texas can look forward, at least in theory, to a respite from tropical storm advisories, the anxious days watching a new cyclonic storm's progress on the Weather Channel, the last-minute panic buying of such staples as batteries, Coleman lamps, plywood to protect windows, canned goods, ice, and bottled water, and, of course, the terrible choice between riding out a hurricane's wrath or evacuating.

It's an interesting bit of human nature, I suppose, that most people (even Floridians who, by now at least, ought to know better) often take the December to May pre-hurricane season lightly, leaving the somewhat unpalatable chores of preparing home and hearth for the possible strike by a tropical storm or hurricane of any category. And I am not merely talking about John Q and Jane Public, but also big utilities such as Florida Power & Light (FPL), law enforcement, and even all levels of government, ranging from the smallest township to the Feds in Washington, DC. One need look no further than what happened in the Gulf Coast when Hurricane Katrina left a vast part of the Gulf Coast devastated; the city of New Orleans and many communities in Louisiana and Mississippi have been seriously damaged, and the government response at all levels was nothing less than disgraceful. Just as many homeowners didn't bother to prepare their homes (and themselves) for the 2005 hurricane season, the powers-that-be, ranging from power utilities that didn't bother to maintain utility poles, to a miserly Congress that cut the Army Corps of Engineers' budget requests for the fiscal year - which of course hampered any upgrade to the vulnerable New Orleans levees.