As Miami gears up, hurricane prep meets the World Cup

MIAMI — Every hurricane season in Florida brings its own set of challenges. This one — kicking off in just a few days — happens to come with droves of visitors from around the world descending on South Florida over the course of several weeks.

The timing of FIFA World Cup games at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens will collide with the Atlantic hurricane season. It also falls during a sweltering time of year that can come with massive amounts of flooding, regardless of whether tropical storms break out. All of that could create a chaotic situation of one of the world’s largest sporting events meeting Florida’s notorious tropical deluges.

“We are very concerned,” Miami-Dade Department of Emergency Management Director Pete Gomez told reporters Tuesday, saying the emergency preparedness team went to “about 32 meetings a week” to prepare for the games. “That is a new community that we are worried about making sure that you folks get the message out … because they’re coming in from all over the world, and they don’t know what a hurricane is.”

To Gomez’s point: Miami is scheduled to host matches with fan bases from regions typically unfamiliar with hurricanes: Scotland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, and the South American countries of Brazil, Uruguay and Colombia.

The World Cup was just one of several factors raised Tuesday regarding the forthcoming hurricane season during a press conference in Miami at the National Hurricane Center, where GOP U.S. Sen. Rick Scott kicked off his annual tradition of traveling across the state and standing alongside local officials to urge residents to get their storm prep in order.

Gomez told Playbook that disaster drills were taking place at the stadium while Tuesday’s press conference was underway. In all, the staff had 125 different classes they could take to prepare. He also shared that the county had secured a contract to make sure translations were available in different languages, so visitors, players and staff would be able to find out whether they need to relocate.

Even that would vary depending where people are staying: Someone in Doral would be high above water, he noted, while Miami Beach had a higher probability of storm surge depending on where a storm travels.

“I’m not going to change decision-making just because of the World Cup,” Gomez said of any evacuation announcements that might be necessary.

Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz said she was “glad” Gomez had raised the World Cup factor. “That’s something that, God forbid it happens, we need to have a plan,” she said. “And we do.” (FIFA did not respond to a request for comment about the storm planning underway.)

Though this year’s storm season is forecast to be “below normal,” officials warned against complacency. GOP Rep. Carlos Giménez, who was Miami’s fire chief in 1992, noted Hurricane Andrew was the first storm that season, and “that’s all it took” as it landed in Homestead as a Category 5, causing massive destruction.

“Even if we do have a slower hurricane season, it doesn’t mean that the threat’s not there,” he said. “It’s just a matter of luck, really.”

Officials also said they were sensitive to the fact that South Florida has seen an influx of new residents in recent years — yet the area hasn’t experienced a hurricane in a long time, so new Floridians may never have gone through one.

“Be a good neighbor,” Cordero-Stutz said. “We do have a lot of new people who have moved into this area, and who might not take it as seriously. You know, people don’t get such a warning for an earthquake. We are blessed that our natural events here give us time to prepare, but it is incumbent upon us to take those situations seriously.”

A version of this report first appeared in Florida Playbook. Subscribe here</i>","_id":"0000019e-6998-d71f-a5df-6fff00310000","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>Subscribe here.

المصدر: Politico