Chertoff, Governor Urge Preparing for Hurricane Season

Associated Press

RALEIGH - Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff joined Gov. Mike Easley on Monday to urge North Carolina residents to prepare themselves for this year’s hurricane season by stocking emergency supplies and making disaster plans with their families.

While the federal government stands ready to help the state if necessary, disaster planning must start on the local level, Chertoff said.

“The primary responsibility for dealing with a hurricane event lies in the hands of the local and state first responders,” he said. “It’s the local government in places like North Carolina that are going to develop the emergency plans for the localities, work on evacuation routes, provide public transportation for those who need it to evacuate.”

Both he and Easley warned residents not to be complacent after last year’s hurricane season left the East Coast unscathed.

“The very, very first response to any hurricane lies with each individual and each family and each business which is going to experience the point of the hurricane first. It’s all about planning and preparation,” Chertoff said.

“If you have a plan for where you’re going to go and how you’re going to meet up, if you’ve prepared yourself with some basic necessities - food, water, medicine, a radio, flashlight - so you can sustain yourself for 48 or 72 hours, then you have done what you need to do to make sure we are well-equipped to deal with a hurricane.”

The federal government, through Chertoff’s agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will step in whenever needed to help states, he said.

Easley reiterated that he believes the state can respond to a hurricane up to Category 3 on its own, despite concerns that the demands of war in Iraq and Afghanistan have left the North Carolina National Guard stretched too thin.

“We expect above-average storms. We don’t know where they will hit. We hope that they don’t, but we do need to be prepared and we are at this point,” Easley said.

Anything stronger, he said, would require the help of neighboring states.

National Weather Service forecasters said last month that they expect 13 to 17 tropical storms to form in the Atlantic this season, with seven to 10 of them becoming hurricanes and three to five of them in the strong category.