Apartment development in Brevard is “robust.”
Brevard County's apartment market is continuing to expand. Rick Glasby reports there are new developments being built or planned throughout the area.
Apartment developers say the Space Coast's resident mix and growth potential help persuade them that this is a good place to expand. In Viera alone, there are 12 apartment developments with a total of over 3,000 apartments.
National Weather Service seeks to fill 155 ‘critical’ vacancies ahead of hurricane season
The National Weather Service is seeking to fill 155 positions at offices throughout the country by offering reassignment opportunities for qualified National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) employees, who are currently working elsewhere.
The scale of the voluntary reassignments illustrates how depleted the nation’s top weather forecasting agency is as it heads into hurricane season, which begins June 1.
The wave of early retirements, firings of probationary workers and other Trump administration incentives for federal employees to leave government service led to more than 560 departures from the NWS, according to a NOAA employee who requested anonymity for fear of retribution.
The NOAA employee said this step involves “moving people around” until a more permanent solution can be found.
One-quarter of hurricane training sessions cancelled after new rules on travel force feds into a no show
Hurricane Season kicks off in two weeks. And in preparation for it, thousands of emergency management operations leaders and workers flock to the annual Florida Governors Hurricane Conference to get needed certifications and learn new tricks of the trade including the latest in meteorology advancements.
But there’s a noticeable difference at this year’s conference – the lack of trainers from federal government.
WGCU’s Eileen Kelley is in Palm Beach County for the conference this week and she brings us this report.
The state of hurricane evacuations – cancelled.
Hurricane Readiness for Coastal Communities –cancelled
Practical Lessons from Historical Hurricanes – cancelled.
Helping You Help Others – also cancelled.
The list goes with more than one-quarter of the hurricane conference’s 40 sessions cancelled due to cutbacks in Federal Funding under the Donald Trump Administration. Trump typically spends his weekends at his winter residence is on the island of Palm Beach.
But frozen travel budgets for other federal workers means some two dozen workers with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service had to skip out of this year’s events and training sessions – training sessions they were supported to be leading.
So will these 12 cancellations affect certifications?
John Jameson the event coordinator with the Palm Beach County Government said no.
Training (6) the weather service trainings and things like that, are not required for emergency managers to get, you know, their certification to do emergency management
Some 2,000 people have registered for the week-long event hailing from 53 of Florida’s 67 counties and more than half of the states in the U.S.
There’s contingents of people from Caribbean nations, Canada and even the United Kingdom.
So there'll be public information officers here. There's emergency managers here. There's a lot of fire rescue, police. Anybody that deals with the aftermath or the planning for a hurricane is going to be involved here.”
But it’s not just hurricanes that attendees are training for. It’s tornados, wildfires – and natural disasters where masses need to sheltered or evacuated.
