Hurricane season starts, but most are unready, poll says
Forecasters see a busier year
MIAMI -- Most people along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts still lack a hurricane survival plan and don't feel vulnerable to storms, despite Katrina's dramatic damage and pleas from emergency officials for residents to prepare before the season starts, according to a poll released yesterday.
The six-month Atlantic season starts today, and forecasters have predicted an above-average year: 13 to 17 named storms, with seven to 10 of them becoming hurricanes and three to five of those major ones of at least Category 3 strength. One forecaster said odds were high that a major hurricane would hit the United States this year.
Nevertheless, 53 percent of those surveyed in 18 Atlantic and Gulf coast states say they don't feel that they are vulnerable to a hurricane, or to related tornadoes and flooding, according to the Mason-Dixon poll.
Eighty-eight percent said they had not taken any steps to fortify their homes, and 45 percent still believed the old wives' tale that masking tape helps keep windows from shattering during hurricanes.
National Hurricane Center director Bill Proenza said a population shift to the nation's coastlines may be contributing to the lack of storm readiness.
"We actually have more and more people . . . with little or no experience with hurricanes and tropical storms," Proenza said.
But only a small amount of people, 16 percent, said they would defy orders to evacuate.
Cathy Miller, who lives on North Carolina's narrow Ocracoke Island, accessible only by ferry, is one of them -- unless it's a Category 4 or worse hurricane.
"I've never evacuated," Miller said. "Every time I say that, though, I knock on wood."
Public safety officials tell residents to stockpile at least a three-day supply of bottled water, nonperishable food, and medicine. In Florida, officials urged residents to take advantage of a state sales tax holiday from today until June 12 on flashlights, gasoline cans, weather radios, plastic tarps, and other storm-preparedness items.
Nearly half of hurricanes that made landfall in the United States hit Florida, and its residents were more prepared than people in other states. About two-thirds of Floridians had a disaster plan, prepared a survival kit, or said they felt vulnerable to hurricanes, the poll found.
Nationally, 61 percent of poll respondents had no hurricane survival kit. Of those who did, 82 percent packed a fire hazard -- candles or kerosene lamps. Missing from most of those kits were axes, which emergency officials recommended after many residents were trapped in their attics after Katrina.
Despite the predictions for a busy season, public safety officials worry that an uneventful 2006 lulled residents into complacency; there were only 10 named storms, and the two that hit the United States were weak.
Researcher William Gray, based at Colorado State University, said yesterday that there is a 74 percent chance of a major hurricane hitting the US coast this year. His updated forecast still predicts 17 named storms and nine hurricanes, five of them intense.
The poll was commissioned by the organizers of the 2007 National Hurricane Survival Initiative.
The May 10-15 telephone poll of 1,100 people has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The Florida poll of 625 people May 13-15 had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. 