LEE COUNTY, Fla. — A 28-page self-refection of Lee County's response to Hurricane Ian has been released after almost a year. It consisted of mostly-glowing reviews, despite the criticism the county faces. But there are also concessions and recommendations on how to serve you better for the next hurricane.
Fox 4's Team Coverage dove into the document. From better staffing at shelters to better cell phone coverage within the EOC and better messaging when it comes to evacuations. The county says Hurricane Ian has provided some tough lessons learned.
Lee County's After-Action Hurricane Ian Report, with the intent to "memorialize lessons learned" identifies the best practices and supports the county's readiness for future hurricanes.
The Category 5 hurricane damaged nearly 2,500 homes, and 5,000 businesses and left more than 221 billion dollars in damage from its wake. Lee County observed all angles of their response in 14 observations, many with recommendations on how to do better and one that came with criticism was the call to evacuate.
Despite the fact Observation #2 reads the timing of the evacuation aligned with the county's pre-existing plans, Fox 4 did a 7-month-long investigation unveiling that county manager Roger Desjarais did not follow the Lee County Evacuation Plan when he was in office at that time.
The plan said our barrier islands should have been evacuated starting at 11 p.m. Sunday night. Instead, the county made the call on Tuesday morning, giving those in our most vulnerable areas less than 24 hours to evacuate.
The county's report says they need to do better. The report recommended that the county work with local media to continue to emphasize how important it is to prepare for a storm and that it communicate the timing and other thresholds that would result in an evacuation.
Other improvements, like Observation #3, better coordinate how many alerts you get on your phone, as many repeated themselves. Or Observation #4, adding more resources for cell phone and internet coverage many decisions in the EOC lost cell service.
Another example is Observation #10 where the county moves all government and emergency vehicles inland ahead of when Hurricane Ian hit. But when all the bridges were washed out, it proved difficult to get those life-saving measures back on the barrier islands.
Observation #9 says the County faced challenges in shelter staffing and preparedness. Fox 4 heard two conflicting statements from County leaders about opening the shelters and preparing in time for Ian.
Roger Desjarlais, former County Manager, said, "The decision to open shelters was done properly."
Then County Commissioner Kevin Ruane said, "The shelters aren’t ours... In a perfect world it is, but when you are working with government agencies... If we can do anything better it’s coordination."
The After-Action report outlined shelter staff was unable to make it to their posted sites on time and the staff needed better training.
Crystal Johnson, a shelter advocate, helps train and prepare for disasters like Ian. Johnson says the lack of urgency from County leaders led to a lack of preparedness for Southwest Floridians seeking shelter.
"We should be leading the state in preparedness or the country because we go through tropical storms, hurricanes, all the time," said Johnson. "This is nothing new to the state of Florida."
According to the After-Action Report, the County "successfully" opened enough shelters to house 34,000 people but only 6,000 utilized these services. Johnson says there was still limited space and miscommunication.
"From my understanding, they were on top of each other like right next to each other, and there was no way to have any real comfort or space there," said Johnson.
The County is now looking at how they can improve before the next storm, and Johnson has suggestions of her own.
"We had a few storms come through lee county and there is nothing in place," said Johnson. "We don’t have a real shelter, they always have to shut down something and try to make do for people and they are just not prepared. How can the community be prepared if the City, County, and the State is not prepared?"
