# 6247
Although it already feels like summer here in Florida, Hurricane Season is (officially) still two months away.
Every spring hurricane experts, meteorologists, public safety officials, and weather geeks assemble at the National Hurricane Conference to discuss the latest research and the upcoming hurricane season.
The conference is being held in Orlando this week, and their website describes it thusly:
Purpose of the Conference
The primary goal of the National Hurricane Conference is to improve hurricane preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation in order to save lives and property in the United States and the tropical islands of the Caribbean and Pacific. In addition, the conference serves as a national forum for federal, state and local officials to exchange ideas and recommend new policies to improve Emergency Management.
To accomplish these goals, the annual conference emphasizes:
* Lessons Learned from Hurricane Strikes.
* State of the art programs worthy of emulation.
* New ideas being tested or considered.
* Information about new or ongoing assistance programs.
* The ABC's of hurricane preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation -- in recognition of the fact that there is a continual turnover of emergency management leadership and staff.
According to an AP report yesterday (Hurricane officials: No more tape for windows By MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press), one of the priorities this year is to convince the public of the folly and futility of taping their windows in advance of a hurricane.
Up until the 1970s, it was pretty much standard advice to homeowners to tape plate glass windows to keep them from shattering, but that advice was discredited, and has not been part of hurricane prep advice for 30 years.
Not only does taping windows provide a false sense of security, it can bind shards of flying glass into larger, and more dangerous, projectiles.
Still, the myth hangs on.
A video that I’ve highlighted in the past, from the Pinellas County Office of Emergency Management demonstrates just how useless masking, or duct taping your your windows really is during a storm (be patient, it can take a minute to load).
Time: 4 min.
When a storm blows in, you put masking tape on your windows and you're fine right? We'll show you just how wrong that assumption can be.
In May, during National Hurricane Preparedness Week I’ll have a lot more on getting ready for the upcoming season.
But fitting your windows with shutters, or plywood can be time consuming, and is something you should be doing now . . . before the season begins.
To become better prepared as an individual, family, business owner, or community to deal with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, or any other type of disaster: visit the following preparedness sites.
FEMA http://www.fema.gov/index.shtm
READY.GOV http://www.ready.gov/
AMERICAN RED CROSS http://www.redcross.org/
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