Do you 'know your zone'? Get prepared for a rough hurricane season in NC

News & Observer (Raleigh, NC)

May 29--WILMINGTON -- Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, Bianca Clinton stood in a Wilmington grocery store and cried, frustrated and scared because she couldn't find food to feed her family.

Standing outside of Cape Fear Community College this week, a day after the second named storm of a potentially ferocious hurricane season dropped rain on Wilmington, Clinton worried a hurricane would trigger those problems all over again.

"I'm worried about the scarcity of supplies because everyone went crazy as soon as Covid-19 started causing us to go into quarantine," Clinton said. "I couldn't find food for about a week."

With hurricane season formally beginning June 1, emergency managers and residents alike acknowledge the response to Covid-19 means that preparing for and potentially responding to storms will look different this year. Many residents, for instance, intend to try to shelter in place at home, while state emergency management officials are turning to hotels in an effort to set up shelters where evacuees can socially distance.

This year, North Carolina has launched a program that visitors and residents alike can use to gauge their risk. The Know Your Zone Program, which is similar to those already underway in neighboring states, is meant to highlight which places are likely to be impacted by flooding and wind.

Local emergency managers can also use it to declare evacuations, like they do in South Carolina where an identical program launched in 2012. Virginia's Know Your Zone program started in 2017.

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Like the neighboring states, North Carolina offers a digital tool where you can enter the address of the home where you live or vacation to find out what zone it's in.

"We think it simplifies things," said Mike Sprayberry, North Carolina's emergency management director, in an interview with The News & Observer. "So for people like me, if you tell me that 'low-lying areas (are evacuating), I'm not necessarily looking at the the height of the area that I'm in. If you tell me I'm in this zone and I know that zone is evacuated, I'm headed west."

Know Your Zone program

North Carolina Emergency Management officials used geographic information from hurricane evacuation studies developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to draft initial evacuation zones. Then, they turned those drafts over to local emergency managers to tweak them based on their own experience.

In Dare County, the zones are based on long-standing practice.

"We typically have evacuated our most vulnerable areas based on the track of the storm, which is typically Hatteras Island and then the rest of the county," Drew Pearson, Dare's emergency management director, Told the News & Observer.

On the new map, Hatteras Island is defined as Zone A, or the area at highest risk of inundation, while all other parts of Dare are Zone B.

New Hanover and Brunswick counties worked together to create their zones using NOAA's Sea, Lake and Overland Surge from Hurricanes -- or SLOSH -- map. The map shows which areas are at risk of being inundated by storm surge.

Areas that face inundation during a Category 1 or 2 storm were defined as Zone A, during a Category 3 or 4 storm were defined as Zone B, and Category 5 as Zone C.

Steven Still, New Hanover County's emergency management director, said he intends to use the Know Your Zone program as a "blue sky" communication tool, allowing residents to better understand the potential risk a storm would pose to their property.

But at the same time, he said, the maps in New Hanover and Brunswick are based solely on SLOSH. They do not include information like the National Flood Insurance Program's flood risk maps or take into account the risk posed by rain flooding, which hit much of New Hanover County particularly hard during 2018's Hurricane Florence.

Should a storm hit New Hanover County, Still said, his staff would use all of the tools at hand to decide who should evacuate rather than basing his decision solely on the Know Your Zone maps.

"It will be targeted to those areas that will be inundated by that particular storm," Still said.

Evacuating during a pandemic

It is still not totally clear, however, where coastal residents would go if there were a large-scale evacuation this year, especially considering the complications of layering Covid-19 onto an evacuation.

"Our ability to shelter in-county is severely limited," Still said The need to distance cots from each other and to equip staff with personal protective equipment will limit how many people can go to shelters.

Red Cross officials previously told The News & Observer that in the event of a hurricane they would likely explore hotels and dorms before turning to traditional shelter sites like schools. But should those congregant shelters become necessary, they would expand the space from 40 to 60 square feet per person to 110 square feet per person.

"We're going to put more emphasis on your personal preparedness and plans -- to make those now and to remove yourself from that hazard and do not rely on in-county congregant shelter from the storm," Still said.

For some, like Clinton, those plans include staying at home.

During Hurricane Florence, Clinton's single-story apartment near Greenfield Lake flooded. Now, she lives in a third-floor apartment with her boyfriend and seven-year-old son.

To prepare, Clinton purchases some emergency products each time she goes to the grocery store -- a roll of toilet paper here, some paper towels there, maybe some canned fruit or, even though she hates it, tuna fish.

Evacuating would be difficult in her 2001 Honda and with a work schedule that typically goes until midnight.

"I know my car, I can't afford a very nice car so I don't know how far I would get trying to evacuate if hurricane season were to get as bad as 2018," Clinton said. "If it were to get that bad, I don't know if I'd be able to get up and go."

Earlier this month, FEMA released guidelines for the 2020 hurricane season, taking into account both the pandemic and hurricanes. FEMA regional administrators will be able to approve the use of federal assistance dollars to pay for short-term sheltering in hotels and dormitories.

NC Emergency Management staff are calling hotels and schools to see which would be willing to participate in a non-congregant shelter program in the event of a storm, Sprayberry said.

While planning conversations are still underway, both Sprayberry and Still said it is possible that evacuation orders will be declared earlier this year than usual in order to give residents more time to leave the coast and officials more time to set up shelter arrangements.

"They're going to want to get people down the road," Sprayberry said.

Zeke Johnson doesn't intend to go down the road unless the storm is a Category Four or Five. He's lived in Carolina Beach since 1996, when, months after the moved there, he was told to evacuate during Hurricane Fran. After spending three days in a hotel with water running down the wall and no power, he had to wait three more days to get back onto Pleasure Island.

"Since then, I've never left the beach," Johnson said this week as he sat outside his home. "Unless it's a Category Four or above, I'm not going to worry about it."

Just inside his garage hangs a shelf stocked with canned beans, peaches and sweet corn, among many other items. In some places, the stash is two rows deep and three rows high.

Johnson also said that his freezer is stashed and he has a generator. But, if a Category Four or Five does come, Johnson said, he would probably head 75 or 100 miles inland, maybe to the Laurinburg area.

"I hope the weather man is wrong," Johnson said. "I don't want to see six major storms ... . All it takes is one."

This reporting is financially supported by Report for America/GroundTruth Project and The North Carolina Local News Lab Fund, a component fund of the North Carolina Community Foundation. The News & Observer maintains full editorial control of the work. To support the future of this reporting, subscribe or donate.

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