The Lee County Chapter of the American Red Cross has sent a volunteer to Southern California where wildfire continue to burn. WGCU's Valerie Alker reports.

A number of hurricane forecasters are updating their storm predictions for the remainder of the year. WGCU’s Luis Hernandez has more on how many are now calling for a slightly lighter season.

Max Mayfield is wrapping up his tenure as Director of the National Hurricane Center – a position he’s held since 2000. He began working for the center 34 years ago – and has been eye-witness to huge changes in how storms are forecast and tracked. He talked to us about some of those changes – and what lies ahead.

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Tropical Storm Ernesto dumped plenty of rain on Florida as it moved across the state earlier this week. It didn’t do much widespread damage, other than knocking down a few trees and flooding some streets. That was a relief to federal and state emergency authorities who were on standby in case the storm intensified.

Federal response to hurricanes is the subject of an investigative documentary that airs tonight at 9-30 on WGCU-Television. For 15 months, a team of reporters and editors at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale detailed FEMA’s handling of the 2004 hurricane season. What they found was that the agency wouldn’t be ready to handle a major disaster. Something that became apparent after Hurricane Katrina last year.

Joe Demma is the Sun-Sentinel’s investigations editor. He tells
W-G-C-U’s Russell Lewis that FEMA awarded more than a half-BILLION dollars after the 2004 season to people who had little or no hardship.

The state’s Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee is operating at its highest level in response to Ernesto. Emergency managers in all 67 counties are taking part in a constant round of conference calls and briefing sessions. W-G-C-U’s Valerie Alker paid a visit Monday to the Charlotte County Emergency Operations Center where planning for the worst and hoping for the best --- is business as usual.

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Storm experts from Florida delivered a pre-hurricane season briefing to members of the state’s US House of Representatives delegation on Thursday. As we hear in this report from Bob Costantini, the now- famous face of the nation’s chief Hurricane tracker appeared in person:


THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER’S POINT MAN, MAX MAYFIELD TOLD MEMBERS OF THE FLORIDA DELEGATION AND STAFFERS THAT AT LEAST FOUR SEVERE STORMS ARE BOUND TO FORM IN THE ATLANTIC.

HE BOASTED THE CENTER’S TRACKING MODELS ARE GETTING BETTER EACH YEAR:

“The reason for that is improved observations, faster computers and much improved computer models. We’ve been very honest with people in saying that where we need help is with the intensity forecasting.”


MAYFIELD PUT IN A PLUG FOR A NEW INTENSITY-SPECIFIC STUDY CENTER WHICH COULD BE IN FLORIDA.

AND REPUBLICAN REPRESENATIVE MARK FOLEY OF PORT CHARLOTTE—WHICH WAS SLAMMED BY CHARLIE IN 2004 - IS STRESSING HIS CONSTITUENTS LISTEN TO MAYFIELD WHEN HE HITS THE AIRWAVES:

“I want people to first and foremost pay attention to his warnings. Understand we all have to be better prepared with water and things in our own homes—self reliance.”

IN THE WAKE OF KATRINA, OFFICIALS WITH FEMA SAY THEY ARE BETTER PREPARED THIS YEAR, FOLLOWING A MAJOR UPHEAVAL AT THE AGENCY.

FOR WGCU, I’M BOB COSTANTINI ON CAPITOL HILL.

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. Red Cross executive director Heidi Ruster says Florida’s chapters have been on the leading edge of help because of years of devastating hurricanes. The National Red Cross has admitted it made mistakes during Katrina last August...especially in providing assistance in ethnic and minority communities. Ruster says one-quarter of the local chapter’s 200 volunteers are bilingual.

“So, yes, we have many more volunteers than we used to have and people to be able to outreach to the appropriate communities and we can always increase that. But we’re a lot farther than where we were a couple years ago.”