By Gary Taylor
Orlando Sentinel (Florida)
Copyright 2007 Sentinel Communications Co.
ORLANDO — Officials couldn’t have picked a nicer day for a hurricane. The sun was shining brightly. Birds soared against clear blue skies.
But that was outside the Seminole County Emergency Operations Center on Wednesday. Inside, it was a different story.
That’s where dozens gathered to cope with Hurricane Tolbert, a storm like none other that has hit Central Florida.
The sense of calm in the center could mean only one thing: This was a drill.
Seminole County emergency-management director Steve Watts called the exercise, two days before the start of the 2007 hurricane season, “extremely important.”
As many as 17 named storms are expected this season -- more than half predicted to grow into hurricanes.
On Wednesday, it was only a test, but the run-through provided some very real problems, from flooding at a hospital to a temporary communications breakdown.
The EOC -- an expansive room filled with computers and other high-tech gadgets on the third floor of the Public Safety and Sheriff’s Office building -- was packed with representatives of county and municipal agencies, from police and fire departments to the School Board, as well as Progress Energy and Florida Power & Light Co. and volunteers from organizations such as the Salvation Army and the Red Cross.
Tolbert was a worst-case scenario: a Category 5 hurricane making landfall in South Florida, then moving through Central Florida still packing 130-mph winds.
The drill began with a tabletop exercise in which participants discussed steps to get ready for the storm two days before its anticipated arrival.
Then they switched to a functional exercise in which volunteers in a nearby room placed calls to the center, detailing the havoc created by the storm.
A tornado hits the Central Florida Zoo near Sanford.
A pedestrian bridge spanning Interstate 4 at Lake Mary collapses.
The roof on the gymnasium at Lyman High School in Longwood, where evacuees have taken shelter, falls in.
An overturned tanker is sending fumes into the Seminole County Jail, but it cannot be evacuated until winds subside.
“It was a pretty bad scenario,” Watts admits.
But it was written with past storms in mind.
For instance, in Wednesday’s scenario, Central Florida Regional Hospital in Sanford flooded and had to be evacuated.
That almost happened in 2004, when a very real Hurricane Jeanne hit.
And for 30 minutes Wednesday, the county’s radio system “failed,” simulating what happened in Lake County in February, when a radio tower was destroyed by a tornado.
That’s the only part of the drill that extended beyond the EOC operation, with on-duty law-enforcement officers, firefighters and paramedics also forced to resort to a backup system.
The last part of the drill dealt with the aftermath of the storm.
Tolbert left at least 15 dead and another 1,000 so seriously injured that they required professional treatment.
Animals were running loose, and an estimated 20,000 cows, horses and pigs were killed -- so many, animal-services officials said, that the storm must have blown some of them in from elsewhere.
By 12:15 p.m., the candy bars, crackers and chips provided by the Salvation Army were running low.
Was this the calm after the storm?
Perhaps.
But it was also lunchtime.
The drill was over.