Saturday, June 1 was the official start of the 2019 Atlantic Hurricane Season. Hundreds of local residents were getting ready with the help of city and county government and other partners.
Among those hundreds who came to the Build A Bucket hurricane readiness event at FAMU’s Al Lawson Center was Tony Long. He was filling his big plastic bucket with all kinds of free goodies.
"I've got some documents, a preparedness checklist," he said ticking off the pail's contents. "A first aid kit, some water, got a nifty little battery-powered lamp here; I'm ready to go!"
But Leon County Emergency Management Director Kevin Peters said the giveaways, as important as they are, were just part of the critical takeaway from the occasion.
"Definitely at this Build A Bucket event it's a chance to meet with local emergency response agencies and our non-profit disaster relief partners as well as some of our private sector partners to ask questions and get answers about being prepared and how best to do that."
How ready the area’s disaster managers for this year’s hurricane season?, Peters replied that the storms of the past two years had sharpened and refined those plans to the highest possible level. Although the hope is they won’t be needed.
Copyright 2019 WFSU