Orlando Fire Department battled an apartment fire on Thursday morning that displaced residents and caused damage to multiple units.
According to OFD, the call to the 4200 block of E Michigan Street initially came in as an apartment fire with people trapped.
Orlando Fire Department battled an apartment fire on Thursday morning that displaced residents and caused damage to multiple units.
According to OFD, the call to the 4200 block of E Michigan Street initially came in as an apartment fire with people trapped.
Because of the nature of the original call, OFD said crews were “conducting a thorough search to ensure everyone is accounted for.”
Chopper 2 was on the scene and captured some of the damage.
Because of the nature of the original call, OFD said crews were “conducting a thorough search to ensure everyone is accounted for.”Chopper 2 was on the scene and captured some of the damage.
Last year, the US was slammed by a record 28 disasters related to weather and climate that inflicted damage exceeding $1 billion. There have already been 11 billion-dollar disasters in the country this year, fueled by even more record-setting weather such as the highest number of tornadoes ever recorded in the US during the month of May. And we’re barely into what multiple storm prognosticators warn should be an “extremely active” Atlantic hurricane season — with the first named storm of the season impacting the western Gulf Coast this week and more potential storms on Alberto’s heels.
You’ve hopefully heeded expert advice to prepare a go-bag with emergency supplies to meet the basic needs of your family and pets in the days after a disaster. But getting a community ready to weather disasters extends far beyond this fundamental home preparedness.
What barriers keep people from heeding evacuation orders, for instance? How can disaster planning better respond to the needs of people with mobility issues? What if people are told to flee but lack the money to do so? What if there’s a language barrier in emergency alerts? How is our perpetual state of crises impacting how seriously we take new disaster warnings?
To explore these and other questions, CNN Opinion will feature the views of experts over the next several weeks on how America can be better prepared for disaster. These pieces from a range of voices are intended to nurture important conversations at city halls and kitchen tables about how preparedness starts long before an emergency alert.
To launch this series, CNN Opinion spoke with former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Deputy Administrator Richard Serino about preparedness challenges and opportunities. Serino promotes crafting a national strategy to better prepare for a greater number of billion-dollar disasters that could have more devastating impacts. He looks back on some of his experiences responding to crises and what that imparted about the needs of survivors and cities hit by disasters — and what we could face around the corner.
Serino served in his leadership role at FEMA from 2009 to 2014. During that time, he responded to more than 60 natural disasters, including serving as the lead Hurricane Sandy federal area commander for New York and New Jersey. Before his FEMA appointment, Serino was chief of Boston Emergency Medical Services and served as assistant director of the Boston Public Health Commission. He is a distinguished senior fellow at the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative (NPLI) at Harvard University.
CNN: Give us a 30,000-foot view of the disaster outlook. How badly prepared are we? What are the biggest vulnerabilities in the US, and are we facing unique challenges compared to other nations? And why are we breaking records for billion-dollar disasters?Richard Serino: We are prepared for what was. We are not prepared for what is and what will be. The pace, size and scope of disasters used to be more episodic. We had big disasters though they were more discrete.
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