Plan for Hurricane season

Map provided by the Texas Department of Transportation shows recommended evacuation routes from the Port Aransas area to San Antonio and Austin.

May 25-31 is Hurricane Preparedness Week, the week when the National Hurricane Center urges everyone to familiarize himself with what hurricanes are and the damage they can do.

Meteorologists say anyone who lives in a hurricane-prone area - and the Texas coast is one of those - should be able to answer three questions about any hurricane that forms in the Atlantic Ocean:

• What are the hurricane hazards?

• What do they mean to me?

• What actions should I take?

Hurricane hazards, the center said, are primarily storm surge, high winds, tornados and flooding.

• The storm surge is the rapid rise in water caused by hurricanestrength winds (not, as some think, by the lower barometric pressure in the center of the storm). This advancing surge combines with the normal tides to create the hurricane storm tide, which can increase the water level 15 feet or more. This rise in water level can cause severe flooding in coastal areas, particularly when it coincides with the normal high tides.

• The strongest winds usually occur in the right side of the eyewall of the hurricane. Wind speed usually decreases significantly within 12 hours after landfall. Nonetheless, winds can stay above hurricane strength well inland.

• Tornadoes are most likely to occur in the right-front quadrant of the hurricane. However, they are also often found elsewhere well away from the center of the hurricane.

Some hurricanes seem to produce no tornadoes, while others develop multiple ones. Studies have shown that more than half of the hurricanes that reach land produce at least one tornado; Hurricane Beulah (1967) spawned 141, according to one study.

• While storm surge is always a potential threat, more people have died from inland flooding from 1970 up to 2000. Intense rainfall is not directly related to the wind speed of tropical cyclones. In fact, some of the greatest rainfall amounts occur from weaker storms that drift slowly or stall over an area.

Inland flooding can be a major threat to communities hundreds of miles from the coast as intense rain falls from these huge tropical air masses.

How should you prepare for hurricane season? Here's what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recommends:

• Discuss the type of hazards that could affect your family. Know your home's vulnerability to storm surge, flooding and wind.

• Locate a safe room or the safest areas in your home for each hurricane hazard. In certain circumstances the safest areas may not be your home but within your community.

• Determine escape routes from your home and places to meet. These should be measured in tens of miles rather than hundreds of miles.

• Have an out-of-state friend as a family contact, so all your family members have a single point of contact.

• Make a plan now for what to do with your pets if you need to evacuate (the Louisiana Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has some suggestions on its Web site at www.la-spca.org/education/health_safety/disaster.htm ).

• Post emergency telephone numbers by your phones and make sure your children know how and when to call 911.

• Check your insurance coverage - flood damage is not usually covered by homeowners insurance.

• Stock non-perishable emergency supplies and a disaster supply kit.

• Use a NOAA weather radio.

• Take first aid, CPR and disaster preparedness classes.

Hurricane season officially runs from June 1 through Nov. 1.

Getting home again - The city's re-entry card

Be prepared for a change in the way you return to Mustang Island in the event we have to evacuate in the face of a hurricane.

Emergency workers will get special blue and white priority re-entry cards this year, following changes in the way state and regional emergency planners are approaching how they allow people back to stricken areas.

Emergency cards will go only to workers critical to restoring city services, City Manager Michael Kovacs said.

He said out-of-town property owners can request re-entry cards be sent by mail.

Re-entry cards for this year are ready for pickup at city hall.

The card doesn't guarantee re-entry to Mustang Island following an evacuation, Kovacs said. That's because state or other agencies may set up their own entry points and refuse to recognize the card as a valid re-entry permit.

Authorities recommend that residents who evacuate also carry with them a state-issued photo ID card and proof of property ownership such as a utility bill.

Once through DPS checkpoints, city personnel will honor priority cards, but may also want to see a state-issued photo ID, Kovacs said.