Still fresh from the disaster left behind by Hurricane Charley in August and going a second round with Hurricane Frances in early September, fire department officials in Sarasota County, Fla., made some notes on what they've learned, particularly in regard to providing shelter and relief to firefighters whose own homes — and fire stations — were wrecked or damaged by the storms.

Lt. Merv Kennell, Sarasota County Fire Department, is the business agent for Suncoast Firefighters and Paramedics IAFF Local 2546, which organized relief efforts for firefighter families affected in Sarasota, Manatee and Charlotte counties. Sarasota County has been the locus of many relief efforts because it neighbors Charlotte County, where the eye of Hurricane Charley made landfall Aug. 13 and wreaked the most devastation. It also assisted with firefighter relief efforts in Lee, Hardee and Desoto counties that were coordinated by Local 1826.

According to Kennell, it took two or three days after Hurricane Charley just to find out how many firefighter families needed help. Out of the 800 members in Local 2546, about 200 members reported some degree of damage to their homes, and about 30 firefighters reported their homes were destroyed.

After Local 2546 put out the plea to the community for homes for members' families displaced by the storm, a list of 25 to 30 homes available for those families grew within a week. Unfortunately, the relief team was ultimately able to place only six families into those homes.

Communications problems

A lack of communication was the biggest problem. “By the time we located a house for the family, we couldn't get in touch with them to let them know a place was available. The phone lines were down, all cell phones were down,” says Kennell. “It's so frustrating to know that you have a home for a family that desperately needs it, and basically the only way you can get in touch with them is by waiting for their day on duty and by physically driving to their fire station and trying to catch them between calls.”

By that time, most of the families, like other storm victims, had “made their own way,” Kennell says. Some had moved in with other firefighter families, some with family or friends. Some had rented hotel rooms, campers, trailers or other temporary accommodations until repairs could be completed on their homes.

Even when displaced firefighter families and available housing were matched up, legal barriers got in the way. Larry Bennett, an attorney for the Warren County (Ohio) Fire Chiefs Association and legal columnist for Fire Chief, offered his mother's vacant house in Venice to a firefighter's family rent-free for three months.

All the neighbors seemed excited about the family moving in, and the president of the homeowner's association, a former Pennsylvania firefighter, was very supportive, says Bennett. But the offer was blocked by the homeowner association's attorney, who said no exceptions could be made to the association's rules, which allow only people over 55 to live in the development and prohibit homeowners from renting their properties.

“Mom is in rehab, and 21 days after leaving there she will be living in an assisted-living facility,” says Bennett, not hiding his frustration. “So picture this: This house [in Venice] is sitting there, cleaned out. The refrigerator is closed, turned off with the door open. The water heater is shut down, and it's all available for a firefighter's family.”

For future disasters, Bennett suggests that a state's governor should include language in the disaster declaration that encourages homeowners associations and others inside the disaster area and neighboring areas to grant temporary exceptions to their bylaws. That would provide a clear legal basis for homeowners associations to bend the rules to accommodate refugees in the disaster, he says.

One of the main lessons Kennell took away is the need for fire departments — and their union locals — to develop stronger preplans for helping firefighters affected in disasters. “If we're going to try to step in and take care of the rescuers' families and their homes so they can be at work, there has to be a plan in place in advance,” he says. “Because we were trying to assemble this operation amidst the chaos. Very difficult.

“The logistics is a very huge piece. It takes a lot of time, from the time you take the initial requests to answering the calls that come in from people who say, ‘OK, if I give you a home, who's going to be there? How many?’ Or ‘You can have my home, but I'm not allowed to have any pets.’ Or ‘I'm not allowed to have any kids in my condo.’ All this sorting has to take place just to compare your list of needs, and that initially was a huge problem.”

Too much to do

The same people who were handling this also were handing the flow of supplies and materials into the community, working with the media and attending to all the regular duties of the fire department.

As firefighters on duty heard of damage to their homes after the storm, Sarasota County's Chief Brian Gorski says the policy was to allow personnel to leave right away and take care of things. “It's a hard decision because you're getting hammered with calls, and you need to make sure you're able to accommodate [the firefighters], and at the same time, not jeopardize your community and have enough resources to respond to emergencies,” he says.

“What helped us in this case — and I think others can learn from it — is that we had brought in another shift of firefighters in addition to the ones that were on duty,” says Gorski. “It gave us extra personnel in the station, so we were able to allow firefighters to go home to mend their house and do what they needed to do of find temporary shelter for their family.”

Gorski says not to worry about the cost of this extra staffing: “You need not worry about the cost because in these types of storms, the costs are all reimbursable by the federal government.”

If it looks like your department is going to be in the path of a hurricane, he stresses, make sure department members have ample time and opportunity to prepare their homes and their families. “Our firefighters knew that they had to take care of their house and get it prepared and find a place for their families way before they came on duty,” Gorski says.

With the approach of Hurricane Frances right after Hurricane Charley, the Sarasota County Fire Department housed the members' families right in its administration building to give firefighters extra piece of mind. Of course, after the storm passed, business at the administration center needed to return to normal and the families had to leave, so Gorski is looking for a more long-term shelter to house firefighter families in storms, such as a school that isn't already being used as a shelter. “I'm not sure we'll accomplish that in this hurricane season, but we need to do that,” he says.

Hardening fire stations for hurricane forces is another area that's going to receive a whole new emphasis in Florida after this season's hurricanes. One of four Charlotte County fire stations destroyed by Charley was fairly new, but the design had been altered at the last minute to include windows in the apparatus bay door for aesthetics.

“You cannot alter the design to fortify the structure in any way,” Gorski stresses. “In a [hurricane-reinforced] bay door, there are no windows. It's a fortified, reinforced steel door that shouldn't fail. In this case, the windows failed and when they went in, it blew the roof off.”

Like many fire departments, Sarasota also has some older fire stations that are definitely in need of replacement. Three are simple aluminum-siding structures that are little better than mobile homes. “They won't last,” says Gorski. “We're going to get them replaced because when that storm comes through, those three stations are not going to be there, without a doubt.”

Relief & recovery preplans

Kennell suggests that departments look at creating regional or state teams specifically for helping with firefighter recovery that can be on the ground within a day. “It's in those first 24 hours that you can really make the biggest difference,” he says. “That's when they really need someone going from home to home, giving firefighters a hand.”

These teams should include at least one person with direct experience in disaster recovery to help coordinate the effort. After Hurricane Charley, Metro-Dade Fire Rescue, a veteran of Hurricane Andrew, sent assistance to help Kennell's team on Day One. “They were awesome,” Kennell said. “They arrived with a $10,000 check to buy supplies.”

Some other tips for preplanning:

• Prepare a cache of common reconstruction and recovery materials, such as batteries; tarps in various sizes; and plywood sheeting, roofing paper and nails that meet or exceed local building codes.
• Maintain a master list on paper of department members' addresses and contact information, as computers may be down for some time. In the absence of communications systems, you may need to send a driver to check on their homes and families.
• Survey the damage while prioritizing the status of firefighters' homes. For example, note if the home was destroyed and the family needs alternative accommodations, the home needs critical work but is livable, or if some work is needed.
• Arrange ahead of the storm for water, ice, fuel and refrigeration trucks. After the storm, you'll be competing with crowds for these resources.
• Start a benevolent fund or nonprofit 501(c)(3) account for collecting donations for firefighters, if there isn't one already. “Have a fund in place and ready to go, so that as soon as something like this hits, you're out there in the beginning in the media advertising your fund or you'll get lost in the shuffle,” Kennell advises.

If your department is lucky and the disaster spares most firefighter families, these preparations will not go to waste. They'll be needed, if not in your community then perhaps in one nearby.

It's not that firefighters are more important than ordinary people in the community; it's that their job is to help all those ordinary people, and they can do that job so much better if they aren't worried about their families' situation.

As Kennell says, “Initially, our primary goal was our firefighters have got to be on duty. And if we can tell them, ‘Look, your roof's covered up, your stuff is not getting wet, your windows are boarded shut and nobody can loot your home,’ if we can afford them housing so that they know their family is dry and out of the weather and things are secured, that allows them the peace of mind to be at work. Once we got past that initial phase, we immediately started trying to take care of others in the community as well.”