Former FEMA Administrator reviews Sarasota County’s Hurricane Irma response

The former head of emergency management at the federal and state levels gave high marks to Sarasota County’s emergency management team in presenting a final report on the county’s response to 2017's Hurricane Irma.

Craig Fugate, administrator of FEMA from 2009 to 2017 and Florida’s director of emergency management for nearly a decade before that, led an “after-action review” of our community’s response to the storm. Gulf Coast Community Foundation and Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation teamed up with the county to engage Fugate’s expertise for this important review. Three peer reviewers from across the state also contributed to the comprehensive analysis.

“We appreciate the partnership of the foundations, who helped make it possible for us to bring in such experienced and well-respected emergency management professionals to review our response and capture and refine our best practices,” said Sarasota County Administrator Jonathan Lewis.

"Opportunities to Enhance What's Already Working"

Fugate presented the review’s findings to the Sarasota County Commission on March 14.

“What I found was a team that was well built, trained, and equipped to deal with one of the largest evacuation operations and sheltering missions that the county’s ever undertaken,” he told commissioners. “But we learned a lot of things in this event, and that’s what we want to focus on.”

The final report and improvement plan identifies strengths and recommends actions to further enhance the county’s disaster response in the future. Gulf Coast’s and Barancik Foundation’s sponsorship helped ensure that nonprofits and other community partners were fully incorporated into the review. Fugate commented that he had never before seen such broad community participation in a disaster review at this level.

Among recommendations for improvement stressed by Fugate to county leaders were:

► Reducing confusion and improving accessibility for the public by identifying official shelter locations in advance, opening all shelters at once, and ensuring all shelters accommodate citizens with special needs and with pets

► Using geographic identifiers for evacuation orders

► Better engaging and communicating with community organizations

► Revising how county services ramp down and ramp back up and how all county employees are utilized before, during, and after a storm

► Revising procurement and pay issues for emergency purchasing

The independent and holistic review included more than 23 meetings and input from hundreds of stakeholders representing the local municipalities, Sarasota County Schools, area nonprofits, law enforcement, the business community, and the public. Fugate and the three emergency management professionals from around the state examined Sarasota County's actions before, during, and after the storm's impact, including protective actions, evacuation orders, shelter openings, recovery operations, and debris collection.

Following the completion and release of the After Action Report, Gulf Coast and Barancik Foundation are bringing together community organizations to review these recommendations and plan for future disaster-readiness.

Click here to read the full 72-page After Action Report/Improvement Plan.