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CNN Live At Daybreak

Potential Danger From Storm Shelters

Aired June 05, 2002 - 05:50   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: This year's hurricane season is officially under way. Emergency officials say there is potential danger not only from the storms, but sometimes from the shelters where people seek refuge.

That story from CNN's John Zarrella.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Eighty-year-old Kay Gold (ph) and 78-year-old Browny Jordan (ph) live in a mobile home park in Pasco County on Florida's West Coast. Their lightweight houses are vulnerable to the wind from even the weakest hurricane.

KAY GOLD (ph), RESIDENT: Now here's where Browny (ph) lives, right here.

BROWNY JORDAN (ph), RESIDENT: Now if this place starts to go, forget it, because these tin cans are gone. You're not going to save any of them.

ZARRELLA: For a safe haven, they look to the county's emergency manager, Michelle Baker. But she has little to offer.

MICHELLE BAKER, PASCO COUNTY EMERGENCY MANAGER: When people ask me, "Is Pasco County prepared for a hurricane?" I say, "No."

ZARRELLA: How could a community so vulnerable to hurricanes be unprepared?

(on camera): In Pasco County, and just about anyplace in the hurricane belt, schools are typically used as shelters. But there's a problem. Emergency managers are discovering that many of the schools they relied on may not be as safe as they thought.

(voice-over): This is South Carolina's Lincoln High School after Hurricane Hugo in 1989. And here, shelters in Mississippi after Hurricane Elena in 1985. And again, after Hurricane George in 1998.

Most shelters are selected by local emergency managers but staffed by volunteers from the American Red Cross, the federally charted relief agency. Now the Red Cross says it will not staff shelters that fail its strict new safety standards. JOHN CLIZBE, RED CROSS: By making it clear that we aren't going to manage that shelter or staff it, it's a way of both keeping our own people safe and communicating to the community that we don't believe it's a safe place to be.

ZARRELLA: When inspectors applied the Red Cross standards in Pasco County, most of the shelters, schools that are safe in normal weather, flunked the test.

(on camera): Is it a liability concern?

BAKER: If the states said it wasn't safe and my contractor said it wasn't safe and we made the decision to open the shelter, I believe we would be liable.

ZARRELLA: Do you have friends you can go to that have a brick house somewhere?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, I'm down here. I have a cousin who lives here in the park. That's the only relative I have down here.

BAKER: Here we have these nice wide-open corridors...

ZARRELLA (voice-over): In Pasco County, Michelle Baker is scrambling for money to install special hurricane screens. With added protection from wind-born debris, some of the schools can again be used as shelters. But until that's done, Baker says she has no alternative now but to take a chance with unapproved buildings staffed by county workers. That's safer she knows than having people like Browny (ph) and Kay (ph) pump it out at home.

BAKER: They've got to evacuate when we're talking about a major hurricane. There's no ifs, ands or buts. Their lives are literally (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

ZARRELLA: John Zarrella, CNN, Pasco County, Florida.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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