Miami (AFP) - What could be worse than a pandemic overwhelming health care systems and causing global economic collapse? Florida knows the answer: a pandemic that rages into hurricane season, which is already on the horizon and causing the Sunshine State to dramatically update its storm preparations.
"COVID is bad, a hurricane is bad. If you combine the two, it is greater than the sum," said Bryan Koon, who until 2017 directed the Florida Division of Emergency Management, and who is currently an independent advisor on emergencies.
"The impact of a hurricane during a COVID environment will be worse than either of them even combined. It will be a multiplier effect, not an additive effect," he told AFP.
That worst-case scenario is looking increasingly likely.
The United States will certainly still be battling the coronavirus by the time the Atlantic hurricane season begins on June 1, even though storms have hit in the past up to two months earlier than that.
Meteorologists at Colorado University, as well as at Accuweather, are already predicting that this year will see a more active than usual hurricane season, saying that between July and November there could be four major hurricanes sweeping in with winds of more than 110 miles per hour (180 kilometers per hour).
"We're preparing for the worst obviously," said Florida Governor Rick de Santis on Thursday. "Hopefully we don't have to deal with a hurricane. But I think we have to assume that we're going to have one."
- 'Hard decisions' -
Residents of the state are well versed in what to do when a hurricane threatens: stock up on supplies, board up windows, or evacuate their homes and shops and get out of the way of the storm if it is a bad one.
Those who cannot afford to do so are evacuated in buses and lodged in shelters. When they return home afterwards, they have to deal with the clean-up and repairs.
The question facing Florida's leaders now is how to maintain that strategy of mass evacuation this year, when people are being cautioned to practice social distancing? How will shelters be run in an era of highly infectious deadly disease, when the usual protocol is to put people side by side on cot beds in school gyms?
