Emergency Management

As hurricane activity starts to ramp up, Meteorologist Bobby Deskins is tracking a wave in the Windward Islands that's expected to bring heavy rain to the Southeast early next week. USA TODAY

usatoday.com - by Doyle Rice - August 29, 2018

The sleeping giant may be about to awaken.

Hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico is forecast to ramp up over the next couple of weeks. "Weather models have flipped the switch on the Atlantic hurricane season and see multiple areas of development possible, starting mainly this weekend," weather.us meteorologist Ryan Maue said.

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Congressman Darren Soto and staff reach out to Puerto Rican evacuees in a lobby in a Florida Super 8 motel in Kissimmee, Florida, earlier this month. Photograph: Staff/Reuters

For the more than 300,000 people who fled after Hurricane Maria the Sunshine State proved to be no Disney World but they are poised to have an electoral impact in the midterms

theguardian.com - by Richard Luscombe - August 9, 2018

 . . . As of the end of June, more than 600 Puerto Rican families were still living in cramped, single-room accommodation in Florida hotels, two-thirds of them in central Florida’s Orange and Osceola counties and relying on the temporary shelter assistance program paid for by the federal emergency management agency (Fema).

And with the Orlando/Kissimmee/Sanford area third in the US for its dearth of affordable housing options, low-cost rentals are especially hard to come by, forcing even more to remain in $60-a-night hotel rooms in rundown areas, especially along the US 192 highway in Kissimmee . . . 

DeSoto Elementary School in Tampa, Florida.

cleanenergygroup.org - Multiple Locations, Florida

Beginning in 2012, in an effort coordinated by University of Central Florida’s (UCF’s) Florida Solar Energy Center in collaboration with the Florida Office of Energy, Florida’s SunSmart E-Shelter Program has equipped more than 100 public schools with small PV systems and batteries, which are sufficient to keep lights and electrical outlets operating during a grid-disrupting natural disaster.  This enables these schools to serve as self-powered places of refuge for communities across the state, providing emergency shelter for 100-500 people per site.

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Florida Power & Light

miaminewtimes.com - by Jerry Iannelli - May 2, 2018

In the long, hot, powerless days after Hurricane Irma, Miamians grew all sorts of irate at Florida Power & Light, South Florida's largest electricity company. After sweltering for more than a week without power, a group of sweaty Miami-area residents sued FPL last year over the widespread outages after the storm.

Despite the fact that FPL says it spent more than $3 billion hardening its power grid after Hurricane Wilma hit in 2005, 4.4 million of the company's 4.9 million customers (about 90 percent) lost power during last year's hurricane despite the fact that Miami ended up avoiding sustained hurricane-force winds. In their class-action lawsuit against FPL, filed in county court September 26, the residents alleged the company misspent those storm-hardening funds.

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