'Everything has changed': How hurricane preparations are adapting to a deadly pandemic
Thousands of hotel rooms, a million masks—safely escaping this season's hurricanes is forcing cities and states to meet an unprecedented challenge.
COVINGTON, LOUISIANA
People who live along the low-lying reaches of coastal Louisiana can be surprisingly sanguine about what hurricane season delivers come August. Lesser storms with names like Danny or Gustav sweep ashore and are soon forgotten. On Saturday, residents of New Orleans will observe the 15th anniversary of Katrina—the unforgettable, massive hurricane whose storm surge fed the collapse of the levees but still could not wipe their famously below-sea-level city off the map.
There’s no playbook, though, for fending off powerful hurricanes that hit in the midst of a pandemic—let alone one that arrives where the infection rate surged to one of the highest this summer. Officials guided by more than a century of hurricane preparedness have been forced to rewrite procedures this year to safeguard against spreading highly contagious COVID-19 along evacuation routes or in crowded shelters.
Although Hurricane Hanna rolled onto south Texas shores as a Category 1 storm last month, Louisiana this week was confronted with two major storms in the Gulf of Mexico at the same time. That’s a historic first, with the potential to deliver a one-two punch to southwest Louisiana.
Tropical Storm Laura, the greater threat, is forecast to grow into a Category 3 hurricane as it crosses the warm waters of the Gulf and is on course to make landfall in southwest Louisiana Wednesday night. Tropical Storm Marco, two days ahead of Laura, pelted rain before beginning to break up Monday—a bit of good luck for harried emergency planners, though Gov. John Bel Edwards also credits prayer.
As a back-up, he also has 2,000 National Guardsmen on standby, has positioned 94 high-water vehicles and 55 boats across the region, and has ordered up 218,000 ready-to-eat meals and 372,000 bottles of water.
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Scientists predict double disaster
Louisiana’s experience after Laura washes ashore may also serve as a primer across the Southeast hurricane zone in an unusually active season. Forecasters said the area could see from 13 to 19 named storms before the season ends Nov. 1, and as many as six major hurricanes.
Before Marco and Laura even registered as tropical disturbances in the Atlantic Ocean, scientists cautioned that major storms could lead to the spread of more COVID-19 infections.
New research by scientists from Columbia University and the Union of Concerned Scientists found that fierce storms ranked as Category 3 or higher could result in thousands of new COVID-19 infections. The scientists modeled an infection scenario by retracing the evacuation routes of the 2.3 million southeastern Floridians who fled Hurricane Irma in 2017. That same number of evacuees on the move today could prompt as many as 61,000 new cases of COVID-19, the study found. It is still undergoing peer review before publication in a scientific journal.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/08/how-hurricane-evacuations-shelters-change-with-coronavirus/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=Science_20200826&rid=2D7EBD8232363870D75E126868635ACF
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Now, if only our politicians will pay attention and take appropriate action......