Steve Yasko interviews John Scott, Director of the Brevard County Emergency Operations Center, about hurricane preparedness. Scott discusses recent significant hurricanes affecting Brevard County, including Milton (2004), Ian (2022), and Nicole (2022). He emphasizes the importance of preparing for specific storm impacts like storm surge, inland flooding, and wind, rather than focusing on category. Scott advises on evacuation criteria, highlighting the need for early warnings and localized preparedness. He also stresses the importance of businesses having disaster plans and the effectiveness of impact windows and hurricane straps. Scott encourages the community to stay informed through various communication channels.
Steve Yasko
Hey everybody! This is Steve Yasko. I'm very excited. We know it's hurricane season. We have John Scott, director of the Brevard County Emergency Operations Center, with us today to talk a little bit about what you should, shouldn't do, and more importantly, what's what's coming up. SoI was just thinking, when was the last time that Brevard actually got impacted by a hurricane really significantly.
John Scott
So I'm gonna answer that question a couple ways, but first let me start by saying thanks for having us. We're excited to be here. Big fan. Like I said, we were talking earlier. Grew up here, listened to WFIT for a long time. So really excited to participate and talk to both you and your listeners. We talked about hurricane history for us. You know, 24 we had Hurricane Milton, where the eye actually went through the north part of the county. So just sort of north of 528, we saw the eye move through and kind of come off the Cape and go out. We saw a very similar track for Hurricane Ian in 2022, where again we had to get kind of that west to east moving storm, and then Nicole, Hurricane Nicole, same year we had the eye come through. So it's one of the things people don't think they realize is last four or five years we've had three eyes come through the come through the county. I think for people who've been around for a while, we probably remember Matthew in 2016 and Irma in 2017. Certainly more impactful countywide from a damage perspective, and then there's always 04 and 05 for those who've really been around for a while. Who knows, like that was three storms in a mess. We talk about 04 really a seminal moment for the county. We sort of ingrained into who we are culturally. Three storms, not fun. 2008, we have Tropical Storm Fay. Tropical storm phase, 30 inches of water south to north, actually causes more damage from a monetary perspective than the o4 season combined. Really? Yeah. So there's that fun story we talk about. Oh, it's just a tropical storm. I'm not going to pay attention, and I wait till the winds get high, and we, you know, it's a hurricane. But like tropical storms can do some significant damage, and we saw that with Bay
Steve Yasko
because they can have just as big a storm surge as well, right?
John Scott
Yeah, they can do storm surge. They can be really heavy rainmakers. They're just going to have a lower wind speed. One of the things that we've done in the last couple of years, I'd say last 10, we really made a concerted effort to not talk category of storm, but talk impacts of storm and the specific parts of storm which we want people to prepare for. So that's storm surge, that's inland flooding from rain, that's wind, that's tornadoes, power loss, water loss. Those are really going to be how you'll hear us talk when we're preparing for a storm that's coming in and getting that message out. We're not going to say it's a category two. In fact, you'll rarely hear me say that. You'll hear me say it's going to be 100 mile an hour winds. These are the folks who that may impact, and if you're in that group, you need to be thinking about what you're going to do.
Steve Yasko
Yeah, it's it sounds more impressive with a storm to talk about wind speed because people don't remember what the wind speeds are per category. You know they they just they just think oh if it's one two or three I can just hang out when it when it could be one two or three that's moving two miles an hour rather than 20 miles an hour and that's going to have a significant impact on what happens on shore right
John Scott
yeah you know you're absolutely right we tell folks all the time every storm is different and even in oh four where we had like Francis and Jean that made landfall five miles apart, like very different storms, very different storms. One was a slow-moving rainmaker. The other was a distant, a decently moving windstorm. Right, very different storms, very different impacts, very different consequences. And I'll tell a fun story. At least I hope it's fun for people. You know, I have conversations all the time with my family members, our friends, those kinds of things, where they'll tell me, you know, hey, I'm not going to leave till it's a category three, and I need winds in 120, and all of these fun things. And then I'll see them, you know, on a Saturday, and they say, hey, did you see the storms the other night? Like that wind was crazy. It was blowing everywhere. Furnace was going. I was like, that's 25 mile an hour winds, you're not going to leave in a hurricane till it's 125 mile an hour. That's 100 mile an hour difference in wind that you're fine with for a hurricane, but for just your regular afternoon thunderstorm, that's too much wind for you. So I think it just speaks to how we as people are able to assess our risk, and that sometimes we think we're a little more tolerant than what reality will teach us,
Steve Yasko
right, right, right. Well, as I promised everyone, we are going to mix in a few hurricane songs as we as we go through chatting with John Scott, director of the Brevard County Emergency Operations Center. So we're going to do Hurricane from Charles Bradley and Hurricane in My Head from Ruxton Kelly, all right here on Music Discovery for the Space Coast and your Hurricane Station, WFIT. I'm Steve Yasko, and we are here with John Scott, Director of the Brevard County Emergency Operations Center, talking hurricanes. So Noah's kind. Predicting a below-normal hurricane season for the Atlantic this year. How do we get people not to become complacent?
John Scott
I'm glad you asked that. It's one of the big things we're talking about this year, is because it is everywhere, right? When and so I have pet peeves like everybody else in their job, and slow seasons, busy seasons, fast seasons, active seasons. That's very high on my list of pet peeves, because I think it does a disservice to folks. That's a sort of hey, it's a slow season, so we're going to have no storms. That's not what the phone folks at the Hurricane Center are telling you. What they're telling you is whether conditions are better or worse for storms to form. They're not going to tell you where it's going to go. They're not going to tell you how long we're going to be, what the intensity is. Like none of those things, because science and technology haven't gotten us there yet. They've gotten us to a pretty big place where we can say busy or less busy. But really, it's about conducive or hostile.
Steve Yasko
Right.
John Scott
And so we're going into an El Nino year. Those are conditions that are typically more hostile. But what I would remind folks is, so even in slow, quote unquote, slow seasons. Right, you can still have really dangerous storms in there, and that's the whole adage. It just takes one, right? Doesn't matter how busy or slow the season is, if you're, you know, if you're in Jamaica last year with Hurricane Melissa, like it was a really terrible year. I think the best example for us in Florida is so 1992. It's the second slowest season on record. We had nine storms that year. Andrew was one. Andrew's devastating Cat Five for South Florida changed how Florida responds to hurricanes holistically. It was the A storm. It was in August, in a strong well, in an El Nino year, and probably the most comparable, like the the most comparable season, at least from an El Nino perspective, is 1983. Just the slowest season on record. Five storms. First storm, a storm. Alicia goes into Texas as a Cat Three with water and wind and all the fun things. So it doesn't really, you know, we talk about slow and busy. Like it's fun to have that conversation, but what we need to be doing is we need to be talking about. We talked about earlier, right? Which is preparing for the parts of the storm. One of the things we're trying to really get out there and get folks sort of change our mindset on is how we talk about storms and how we prepare. So you'll notice when I'm talking about storms, I won't say all the time I want us to be preparing. I'll say I want us to be prepared for right. So the past tense. The nice thing about hurricanes, there is a nice thing, is that we get warning, we get notice, we know a general time frame when they're going to occur. Technology gives us the ability to really understand several days, if not you know weeks. Hey, something could be coming this way, so it's really on us as a community and as members of that community to make sure that we're ready for that storm. And then all it is is when a storm is threatening our area. So if we do have something that looks like might impact Brevard, we're already ready. We have our plan plans in place. We have our disaster supply kit, and we're just putting those plans into action, so we know if we're going to evacuate, we know if we're not going to evacuate, we know where we're going to go, we know how we're going to get there, and what we're going to bring with us. It is really about getting to that prepared mindset. You know, it's a. I tell folks if you're prepared for a storm, that means you've already gone to Publix, you've already gone to Aldi or wherever you shop, and you've gotten your disaster supply kit. That stuff's ready to go. Know where you're headed. Preparing means I'm telling you there's a storm, and now you're going to get those things. Like that's the wrong place. We want to be that prepared, that past tense, that ready.
Steve Yasko
And never, and never forget the batteries for your transistor radios. Never forget. Yes. Well, that's true because when the cell phone towers go, I mean, if we have a prolonged power outage, that's when the cell phone towers will lose power, and and really, radio stations, WFIT included, generally have generators, and as long as the antenna doesn't fall over, you know, we'll be on the air broadcasting, and that people will be able to get storm information. Talk a little bit about because one thing that always weirds me out is is torn is tornadoes and how they tend to form in one specific quadrant and how to watch out for those.
John Scott
So tornadoes are a real threat. We talk to we talk about hurricanes in for Irma, 2017. We actually had seven tornadoes in this county come out of Irma. So, I mean, fortunately, smaller storms or smaller tornadoes, those kinds of like sort of up and down, not like long track storms. You talked about quadrant. You're normally going to see that in that northeast side of the storm, what's often called the the dirty quadrant or the dirty side of the storm. That's typically where they are the most. They kind of form out in front of it. If you, if folks remember Milton in 24, we actually saw a pretty scary like march of tornadoes as Milton came across from the Gulf through where we saw sort of out in front of it, and on that sort of it was slightly more north south. Which is a little bit there is a little different, but we saw sort of tornadoes just march all the way up the coast, and unfortunately for folks in St. Lucie and Indian River, they saw some pretty serious tornado outbreaks. We got very fortunate; we had a small one here in Cocoa Beach with Milton, but it wasn't near what they saw south of here, and that seemed to be where that tornado line kind of stopped, but it's an absolute threat with with hurricanes. It's something you're going to hear us talk about. Something the Weather Service talks to us about and talks to everyone about. Just being prepared for tornadoes as part of that risk calculation.
Steve Yasko
Yeah, I have to say, if there's one thing that freaks me out about about hurricanes, it's the tornado part. It's the the the storm. The storm is devastating. The storm is dangerous. But tornadoes, as you're saying, you you there you can prepare less for them. They just they just pop up.
John Scott
You get significantly less notice. You know, we talk about hurricanes in the three days, five days. That's where we you know a good safe thing. You know, when we talk about a successful warning for a tornado, that's 15 minutes. Right. And knowing where you're going to go in your house because tornadoes are year-round. They're obviously a hurricane thing, but we get into the winter, sort of November through January, February. You know that's our severe weather season. That's when we see the majority of you know the longer, bigger tornadoes. And I think really there's two things with tornadoes everyone should be doing, which is one, make sure you have a way to get some kind of weather alert, whether that's on your phone through an app, you can sign up by for alerts by visiting our web page, which is www.embrevard.com. It's a contractual thing, I have to say.
Steve Yasko
Of course,
John Scott
and then and there's a variety of ways to get those, but you need to have them so they come to your cell phone. Just turn on your, you can just turn on your regular alerts on your phone that come with it, and they'll notify you because that 15 minutes really can make a difference. And then the second piece of that is, if you know you're going into some weather like a hurricane or maybe when the winter we get into our severe weather, have something to protect your head. Like that just that can be your pillow, that can be a bike helmet, that can be 1000 different things, but have it near you so that it's accessible. I'm by no means encouraging people to sleep at night with a bike helmet on. I'm just saying have something near you so that you can protect your head. The reason being, many tornadoes come at night. A lot of us are sleeping when that happens, and the majority of fatalities come from head injuries. So it's just simply by protecting your head, you're giving yourself a better chance of survival. Like you might get hurt, you might get injured, all those kinds of things. But we're really trying to focus on life safety here.
Steve Yasko
That is a great piece piece of advice. So speaking of tornadoes and hurricanes, next up the heavy with hurricane coming, and Nico Kayes, she's a she's she's got a take on this. This title of the song is "This Tornado Loves You All" right here on Music Discovery for the Space Coast, WFIT. We are speaking with John Scott, director of the Brevard County Emergency Operations Center, and enjoy the tunes. And we'll be right back to talk a little bit about how to know what your risk
John Scott
is. I do love risk.
Steve Yasko
I'm Steve Yasko. You're listening to WFIT, and we're speaking with John Scott, the director of the Brevard County Emergency Operations Center, about the upcoming. Well, we're into hurricane season, but it does does tend to start does tend to get more active the later we go into the season. So you have five steps, and I wanted to focus on a couple of them. How do you know your risk? How do you figure that out?
John Scott
So thank you for asking me all the fun questions. It just teases me right up to just get on the soapboxes. So I appreciate it. So knowing your risk is our first step, and it really is one of the most fundamental steps. And it really kind of boils down to your home, your family, what your needs are, and where you live. Right. So if you live on a barrier island, you're going to be more susceptible to storm surge from the ocean or the rivers, or isolationism, where if we have a causeway that gets damaged, and when I talk about causeway damage, people tend to think about the bridge itself, and rarely is that going to be the case. It's mostly going to be the approaches to either side, but if you lose an approach, you lose a causeway. So, you know, are you someone who lives on a barrier island and you know you're you near the ocean or you're near the river and you could be susceptible to water from there, or you need to be connected to resources and the idea of maybe not being able to use a causeway is a problem. That's how you sort of start by identifying what your risks are. Maybe you're in an area on the mainland that has historically, you know, floods when we get a heavy amount of rain, right? So if we get six inches of rain in an evening, and you've got water in your driveway and in your yard, which by the way is where that water is supposed to go, it's significantly better than in your house. You know that if we're talking about hey, there's going to be a hurricane that's going to bring you eight to 12 inches of water. Okay, well maybe that water now goes from my streets and my yards to closer to my house and even in my house. So those are concerns for me. If I live in maybe a mobile or manufactured home, which is simply more vulnerable to wind than a site built home, and we're talking you know hurricane force. Winds, you know that 8580, mile an hour plus you know 90 mile an hour, 95, like that's going to be more of an issue for someone in a mobile home than it might be for someone in a site-built home, or maybe you live in an older home, or you haven't been able to do anything with your windows. You're not able to put up shutters or plywood, or you don't have impact windows, which makes your structure more vulnerable to wind. You know that's when you want to think about, hey, you know, should I stay? Should I go for those things? And then lastly, you know, we talked about tornadoes. You know, are those the kinds of things that are there that you're going to be concerned with? Tornadoes concern us all. Making sure that you are prepared to do those kinds of things. And then, are you someone who needs power or water for your health? So, if you're someone who maybe is on oxygen, or you have medications you need to keep refrigerated. You should assume everyone in Brevard County should assume that if we have a hurricane, you're going to lose power. Like FPL does a great job; they put a lot of resources in. They're tremendous partners, but your core assumption should be you're going to lose power, lose power at some point. And you know how does that impact your health? And soif you're looking at those kinds of things sort of systematically of what we call like the parts of the storm, and then sort of saying how does that translate to where I live, my needs, my family's needs, that really is about how you get to what your risk is going to be. And at some point in there, you're going to either say like, okay, well that's too many, I'm vulnerable, so I need to leave, and we always tell people, "Hey, if you're just not comfortable, there's no reason you stay, right?
John Scott
We have there are a lot of options out there for people who evacuate, whether that's going to a friend and family member's house where you feel more comfortable, going to a hotel, and then or you can come to a public shelter as well. We're we're going to have those options for people should they need to evacuate, but it it really is about individual choices, and one of the ways we try to make sure that happens is that's exactly how you'll hear us talk during storms,
Steve Yasko
and and I and I'm curious, you know, we think we think of storms as something that affects residents and individuals, but it also affect businesses. What what should businesses be doing to have a plan?
John Scott
So businesses should be doing everything that we're doing as people, just on the business side of the house. Again, starts by knowing your risk. I think what most people don't realize is the stat is maybe a little dated at this point, but 25% of small businesses impacted by storms never reopen, and a lot of that comes down to making sure that you have a plan. You know how to where your employees are. You know what your structure can handle and what it can't handle. You have appropriate insurance for those things. You have plans in place to sort of deal with any interruption. You make sure you know where your supply chain is going to be, where it can be paused, where it can be increased. But what I also try to talk to when I talk to businesses is the idea that preparedness is a it's a competitive advantage, right? Never like to sort of say those things, and we all want to be one big community when we're dealing with a storm and coming back. But like, if if if I'm a if I'm another business and I need your stuff to help make sure my business runs, if I can get it from you, great. If you're not there and I still need to make my business run, and you're telling me it's going to be two weeks before you're back, and someone says, "Hey, I can get that for you today, like, I mean, it's great. Steve, we have a good time together, but like, I need that thing now, and that's a way businesses can really leverage those things and say, "Hey, I'm I'm prepared, I'm ready, and I think it's we instead of focusing on like what it's going to do for business, it's really a real opportunity as well for folks.
Steve Yasko
Right, right. So one question I've always wondered is: Are impact windows enough, or should you shutter even if you have impact windows and doors?
John Scott
So impact windows are going to traditionally be enough, but you need to do all of them, and it's not the whole story either. So impact windows are the like covering your windows in general is what you want to do. It's why plywood is fine, shutters are fine. Impact windows is going to be the easiest. It's going to be the one that gives you the most sort of just regular life, right? Because if you've ever been in somewhere where you put up shutters. You put up plywood in August, which is no fun, or September or October, and then you're just in a very dark house for a couple of days, right? Impact windows are getting those. They're also the most expensive. What the what they're all trying to accomplish is doing what the engineers call is is sort of keeping your building envelope intact, and that's the big goal is to keep that whole structure intact. So, yes, you want to have something on your windows that gives you the greatest chance, but also don't stop there, right? Look at how your roof is connected to your walls, right? So that's the infamous hurricane straps, right, where you can get some insurance breaks by increasing those kinds of things. So
Steve Yasko
just did that, as a matter of fact, and boy, did it save it. Did it save on the homeowners?
John Scott
Absolutely, yeah. And it and it also should give you a real comfort knowing that like your building is as tight as it can be, and because that's really what you're trying to protect. Like there's the old wives' tale that like a tornado comes, like you open the other side of your window, and it's going to make everything great. Like that's actually terrible, because what you're doing is you're creating unequal pressure, but. Between outside and inside, and a hurricane is just a giant ball of low pressure energy that's moving through that. Once there, and core physics will tell you like pressure outside versus pressure inside. As long as they don't have to interact, they're cool. But the minute you give them an open window or an open a broken window, then they really don't like each other, and they fight. And the low pressure always wins, and the way it wins and the way it equalizes is it's going to pop your roof off, and that's what you're trying to avoid. Sowhen we talk about putting shutters up and making sure your roof is tight, like that gives you the best advantage to keeping your whole structure intact, your envelope in one piece.
Steve Yasko
That's that's that that just scared me. That's what I'm here to do. Great. Hey, we are going to play a couple more tunes, and and then we're going to talk a little bit about evacuation. Here comes Ziggy Marley with "Storm is coming" and "Shelter from the storm" from Bob Dylan here on WFIT Music Discovery for the Space Coast of Florida. I'm Steve Yasko speaking with John Scott, director of the Brevard County Emergency Operations Center, about all things hurricanes, tornadoes, and what we have to look forward to should a storm come our way. I'm Steve Yasko. You're listening to WFIT. I'm speaking with John Scott, director of Brevard County's emergency operations center, and we're also playing some tunes. I hope you enjoyed those. So, so John, one of the things I'm always kind of curious about: when and how is it determined that an evacuation order should be issued?
John Scott
So, it's a it's a long answer. I'm going to try to give you as short a version as I can because there's a there's a lot that goes into it because as you would imagine it's it's multifaceted. We're trying to balance a lot because what we know at the core is we have to balance getting people who are perhaps in harm's way out of harm's way, or at least saying, "Hey, you're in harm's way and you should leave, versus the more times we say, "Hey, you should leave and you do, and nothing happens. We know you're less likely to do it the next time. So what's that Goldilocks zone in there where we're sort of being appropriate in our messaging, but we're also still allowing some you know caution in there in case something changes with the storm. So it changes every storm. But what we're really, really looking at, you know, I talk about parts of storm, right? Soevacuation for us is really going to be focused on storm surge and and flooding associated with rivers, because we talked earlier about wind, and when people focus on that, they may not know that storm surge and flooding, like drowning, is the number one cause of fatality, as is associated with tropical storms and hurricanes. And while we've done a lot, we talked about shutters and things like that for wind. We still struggle to mitigate our homes against water and the damage that moving water specifically can do. So it's very going to be very barrier island focused a lot of times on that area where we're working on getting people off barrier islands. We talked about that, but we're also going to look at the other again parts of the storm, right? So, our mobile and manufactured home parks, where they're going to be more susceptible to wind, we're going to be looking at at those kinds of folks and making sure that we have appropriate things in place. And then anyone who may need power or water for their health, again, and then anyone who lives in that historically sort of flood point. I think that's sort of our target audience, our target group we're looking at, and then we're going to be taking information in from the Weather Service and the Hurricane Center and looking at what those values do to that group, and then we get to a point where we say, okay, we have a threat that could potentially impact enough of those people to move and prompt a barrier, or I'm sorry. Prompt an evacuation order. How do we make sure we give people enough time to evacuate? Right. Where are they likely to go? Where do we want them to go? And then what's the general time that it's going to take on the roadway network to get them there? And so again, a lot of factors. But I want to leave with a couple of core points just for people to remember. Which is one: whenever we issue an evacuation order, we're always going to do so with enough time for people to evacuate safely. And then, two, I really want to remind folks that you don't have to go to Georgia or Maine or Canada when we talk about evacuations. We again have done a lot in this state when it comes to increasing our building strength, giving ourselves options so you can safely evacuate in Brevard County if you're just getting out of a flood-prone area, if you're getting out of storm surge area, getting into a good strong building and riding it out. Like you don't have to go those great distances. You know we tell people go 10s of miles, not hundreds of miles. Run from water, hide from wind. Like those kinds of core concepts are really what we build all of our strategies around, and then we're always going to err on the side of caution and make sure we're providing people ample time to get out.
Steve Yasko
So we'll finish out a little bit with for those of you who might find this funny: riding out the storm from Mario's Speedwagon and riders on the storm from the door. The quintessential storm song, John. Thank you so much for coming in today. We really, really appreciate your time and your staff's time as well. I will be looking forward to not talking to you for the rest of the season. Fingers crossed. And Steve, if
John Scott
I could get one quick plug in, please do again because information is important, you guys are putting information out. We want to make sure everyone knows where to get good information. Obviously, we're connected with you all. You'll get good information. You guys are talking to the Weather Service, so you're a good, reliable source. But if you are looking, you know, we're on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on Nextdoor. You can actually get text directly from us by texting the number 888777 and just putting Brevard EOC in your text mess, and you'll get stuff directly from us. Whether it be about hurricanes, whether it's about prescribed burns, it'll frequently be about rocket launches. So just another way for people to stay informed as we're going through and making sure that we're we're again turning that corner culturally and as a community where we're prepared for, not preparing for.
Steve Yasko
Absolutely, and we will have links to all of those resources from the EOC on our website wfit.org as well. And thank you all for listening. And remember to stay tuned to WFIT and the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network from spaghetti models to clean up and recovery whenever there is a predicted storm. Thanks again, John.
John Scott
Thanks for having us.
