Hurricane Beryl's rapid intensification has emergency managers mulling survival timelines

Beryl’s 24-hour ratchet from a tropical nuisance to a Cat 4 menace should energize discussions about what happens when the forecast for ruination comes with only a day’s notice, leading emergency managers said.

The low-lying Florida Keys may not be able to fully flee to the mainland. Shelters would have to muster employees with scant warning. State officials may have to commandeer buildings — any hardened building — to keep people alive.

And even if there’s 24 hours’ notice, there’s even less daylight.

“Everyone thinks you have 24 hours, but you don’t have 24 hours, you have one full day of daylight,” said Craig Fugate, former FEMA administrator and director of the Florida Emergency Management Division from 2001-2009. “The scariest scenario is the Florida Keys because you can’t get people to high ground.”

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Fugate said many disaster plans are based on the luxury of having 48 to 72 hours to prepare, evacuate and ruminate. Beryl is a reminder that a rapidly intensifying storm could detonate on Florida’s doorstep with little time to mobilize.

“It would be an all-hands-on deck situation,” Fugate said.

The National Hurricane Center is concerned enough about a storm rapidly intensifying at the coast that meteorologists simulated a time frame for what it would be like if 2023’s Hurricane Otis were aimed at South Florida. Otis grew in the Pacific, exploding from a 50-mph tropical storm to a 165 mph Category 5 the day ahead of making landfall in Acapulco.

NHC Deputy Director Jamie Rhome said during the National Hurricane Conference in March that the center needs to do a better job at making people understand that an Otis is inevitable for the U.S.

“At some point it is going to happen, and I know enough about emergency management to know it’s going to be pure chaos,” Rhome said in March. “The system is not designed to handle it. The infrastructure is not designed to handle it. The ports and the transportation system would collapse.”

Florida no stranger to rapidly intensifying hurricanes

Florida has been flattened, submerged and generally roughed up in the past by rapidly intensifying storms — defined as those that gain 35 mph or more in a 24-hour period.

Category 5 Hurricane Andrew rapidly intensified in 1992 when it moved over the warm Gulf Stream current and closed in on Homestead.

Hurricane Charley in 2004 rapidly intensified to a Cat 4 and shifted to the right, saving Tampa but shredding Punta Gorda.

Hurricane Michael had at least two jolts of rapid intensification that are specifically mentioned in the post-mortem analysis of the 2018 storm. The second took it from a Category 2 hurricane on Oct. 9 to a Cat 4 and then a Cat 5 at landfall on Oct. 10.

In 2022, Hurricane Ian underwent a rapid intensification that shot it from a minimal Category 3 hurricane to a high-end Cat 4 in just a few hours.

But few, if any on record, have made the transition from tropical storm to Cat 4 in the 24 hours ahead of a Florida landfall.

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Colorado State University senior researcher and hurricane expert Phil Kloztbach said the 1935 Labor Day hurricane is the closest he can recall that gained Beryl-like strength in a compressed time period near Florida's coast. The storm went from a tropical depression on Aug. 31 to a 185-mph Category 5 hurricane at l andfall on Long Key southwest of Islamorada on Sept. 2.

As many as 485 people died in the storm, including 260 World War I veterans who were working on a section of the Overseas Highway, according to a Library of Congress article .

“There is a storm out there that will exceed everything that we are ready for and everything we plan for,” said Bryan Koon, the former director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management and CEO of IEM, a government contractor that focuses on emergency management. “There is a bit of hubris in thinking we can handle every single storm.”

People who aren't in evacuation zones may have to stay put

Koon was Florida’s emergency manager during Hurricane Irma in 2017 when as many as 3 million people who weren’t in evacuation zones fled the storm. The exodus, which included an additional 3 million people who likely were asked to evacuate, clogged roads with residents trying to drive hundreds of miles north or west to escape Irma instead of tens of miles inland to a shelter, hotel or the home of a friend or family member.

If time is short, Koon said emergency managers will have to triage specific areas to evacuate such as mobile home parks, or just getting people off the beach. Evacuations in Florida are driven by storm surge, not wind speed.

In Palm Beach County, except for mobile home parks and areas near inlets including parts of Palm Beach Gardens, Jupiter and Boca Raton, evacuation zones are generally east of Federal Highway.

“For some people, you will have to encourage them to do something counter to their ideas and that’s to shelter in place so you can save the lives of the folks who have to evacuate,” Koons said.

There is also a concern about storms blowing up outside of the traditional hurricane season dates of June 1 to Nov. 30, said University of South Florida College of Public Health Associate Professor Amber Mehmood, who teaches classes in emergency management.

People may be less prepared ahead of June 1 and resources may be stretched thin later in the season.

Beryl was the earliest forming Category 4 hurricane , and then the earliest forming Category 5 hurricane on record.

“This is a wake-up call for us,” Mehmood said about Beryl’s early formation. "Like it or not, this is going to get worse in the coming years."

Florida Executive Director of Emergency Management Kevin Guthrie was on the same panel as NHC’s Rhome in March when the possibility of an Otis at Florida’s coast was presented.

He agreed it was a real scenario and that emergency managers need to work on compressing their ability to react when there is only 36 hours or 24 hours to get people to safety.

“I would argue that Florida does hurricanes better than any other state in the country,” Guthrie said in March. “Are we going to have challenges? One thousand percent. And we need to have a serious conversation about how do we get better at rapidly intensifying hurricanes.”

Kimberly Miller is a journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate and how growth affects South Florida's environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. Help support our local journalism, subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Hurricane Beryl's rapid intensification has emergency managers mulling survival timelines