Erin, Dean test city's storm readiness
BY PHIL REYNOLDS SOUTH JETTY REPORTER

Mustang Islanders, that storm continued on a westward course and will miss Texas altogether.

It was a roller-coaster couple of weeks, but City Manager Michael Kovacs believes there's a bright side.

"Erin was good practice, a good chance to refresh ourselves," Kovacs told the city council on Thursday, Aug. 16. "We did some drills in the spring and winter, but this was a good chance to fire up some stuff."

At the time, the whole city staff was keeping a wary eye on Hurricane Dean, still churning its way toward Category 5 status in the Caribbean Sea. Luckily for

In anticipation, however, Kovacs - who is also the city's emergency management coordinator - and Mayor Claude Brown attended conferences with county and state emergency officials who were preparing to offer assistance to south Texas cities.

Hurricane preparations revealed nothing new or startling. Advice to citizens remains as sound today as it did when they were told to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Rita, which was then (in 2005) headed directly for Port Aransas.

• Make sure your vehicle is fueled

• Gather all your important documents, such as birth certificates and insurance papers to take with you

• Have a two-week supply of medications on hand - if you don't, get prescriptions refilled at your local pharmacy

• Provide for pets, who should be evacuated along with the family

• Make sure you have a destination - don't just "take off" - and plan evacuation routes

• Secure everything that you'll leave behind.

However, officials did reveal a relatively-new wrinkle in hurricane evacuation: A phone number, 2-1-1, which anyone who needs help can call to get on an assistance list. The 24-hour-a-day Nueces County line provides assistance, including making arrangements for evacuation for people who don't have another way out of town.

In addition, Texas officials put to use lessons learned from Hurricane Rita two years ago. As early as last week, they were gearing up task forces and activating the State Guard, a statewide paramilitary force similar to the National Guard.

Texas also called up 15,000 reservists, who would have helped counties and communities in the event Dean made landfall here.

"The problem is that the state has such a long lead time on getting assets rolling," Kovacs said.

He said Port Aransas could be under a county-ordered evacuation order for tourists and high profile vehicles as early as three days before the storm was expected to hit.

"The state wants all evacuation completed 36 hours ahead … they like to pull the trigger at 72 hours," Kovacs said. "We can do it a lot quicker than that, and the longer you wait, the better idea you have of knowing where the storm's going."

He said Port Aransas' lead time for evacuation - the time it takes for officials to be sure everybody is on the road -- for a Category 4 hurricane is 32 hours.

One more-or-less high-tech system planned for notification use, the socalled "reverse 9-1-1" system, would have been used if Dean had headed our way. However, officials are looking at "reverse 9-1-1" with a slightly jaded eye now.

First tried during Rita, the system uses a recorded message and dials every telephone subscriber in an area to warn them that an evacuation order has been issued.

It's called "reverse 9-1-1" because instead of the phone calls going from residents to emergency offices, they go from emergency offices to residents.

But the nature of the recorded message is such that its first few words sound like a telemarketing call. That, officials believe, caused numbers of residents to hang up without waiting to hear the entire message.

"In any case, a number of those people were probably too busy making evacuation plans to listen to a phone message," Kovacs said.

He reminded residents that if another storm approaches, they should monitor news outlets and the National Weather Service for updated information on hurricane tracks.

Even as Hurricane Dean was veering south of Port Aransas, AEP Texas, which supplies electric power to Port Aransas, was warning residents on life support systems to be prepared in case of a power outage.

Some of those systems depend on electricity to keep operating.

"We understand the special needs of customers who are on life support systems or who need uninterrupted electric services for health reasons," said David Hooper, the utility's Corpus Christi regional customer service manager. "However, we have no control over what Mother Nature will decide to do."

Hooper advised electric customers with special needs to evacuate "well in advance of an approaching storm" to avoid power interruptions.

Along with them will be drivers of high-profile vehicles such as recreational vehicles and camping trailers and boat trailers, all of which are susceptible to higher-than-normal winds.

"It only takes one of those being blown over on the highway to block everybody's way out of town," said one emergency official. "We want to get them out of the way as soon as possible."

By Tuesday, Aug. 21, the city staff was "winding down," Kovacs said.

At the same time, they were fully aware that the official hurricane season lasts through November.