Emergency Management:
• Lee County continues its focus on building the Emergency Management team across functions, disciplines and jurisdictions. Disaster response and recovery is a whole community effort.
• Lee County Emergency Management’s coordination with shelter partners – school district, law enforcement and others – has continued and improved to ensure robust staffing and training.
• The county has focused on structural mitigation efforts to harden and increase generator capacity at shelter locations. Emergency Management is using state and federal grant funds to assist in this effort.
• Preparedness messaging and outreach continues. The county launched a new alert system --- called AlertLee – and developed an app – LeePrepares – for mobile devices.
• The county increased training and is ensuring all staff have roles and responsibilities during disasters and that they have appropriate training and opportunity to exercise their roles.
• The annual All Hazards Guide has been updated and modernized for improved messaging with the community. Visit http://www.leegov.com/publicsafety/emergencymanagement/plan/ahg .
Flood mitigation:
• Lee County Natural Resources and the Lee County Department of Transportation both have worked since Hurricane Irma to clear drainage areas that were impacted by the storm, as well as others that were not impacted but were in need of clearing.
• After the initial post-storm removal of known waterway impediments, the county moved on to conduct flood assessments by watershed areas to identify impediments to storm flow and take care of those that could be handled in the short term.
• The county continues to work an analysis of potential long-term, engineered flood-mitigation projects.
Solid Waste:
• The county has identified additional, post-storm debris staging sites.
• Solid Waste has increased its pre-season coordination with landowners (ie municipalities, special districts), other agencies and intradepartmental county staff.
• The county evaluated and strengthened best practices for debris-collection plan implementation.
• Solid Waste developed an electronic signup for a form for professional property managers and residential homeowners’ association (HOA) presidents who need to take steps post-storm to protect their communities. FEMA regulations require that private or gated communities have a current Right of Entry and Indemnification form on file with Lee County before any disaster debris recovery crews are allowed to enter into the community. The form needs to be completed annually, and now it can be handled in a paperless process.
• Public education messaging continues. The county has done outreach on how to prepare yards pre-hurricane season/storm events and also best practices for setting out debris post-storm.