June 1st marks the first day of the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season. The 4th Annual Hurricane Conference and Expo gave the public a chance to get ready.
Your First Alert weather team, county emergency management officials and volunteer associations manned booths and gave special presentations on preparedness for this hurricane season. The message? You should always be ready no matter what.
This year's hurricane forecast calls for a near average season, but that shouldn't impact how you prepare. There's no correlation between the number of tropical systems forecast and your risk of being hit by one. In 1989, Hurricane Hugo was the only storm to make landfall on the east coast, and we all know the devastation it caused.
The theme at Monday's expo was "Preparedness Starts with You."
Horry County's Director of Emergency Management, Randy Webster, summed it up, "Only you are responsible for yourself and your family. We're here to help the big picture, to get the community taken care of, evacuation routes established, shelters taken care of. But I don't understand what your needs are, so it's not up to government or me or anybody else. It's up to you."
Those who attended learned how to recognize and report hazardous weather, about evacuations and shelters, and even how to prepare their pets. Our own First Alert Chief Meteorologist Ed Piotrowski spoke at the luncheon, and your First Alert weather team was there answering questions and handing out this year's tracking charts.
The main thing we want to get across is to have a plan for yourself and your family. Science and history have shown that those with a plan act on it, but people without a plan just react to the crisis and make many more mistakes.
You can find out more about how to prepare on our tropical page, just click on the link below.
Tropical Update
