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Floridians are facing record death tolls from coronavirus while also preparing for an active hurricane season.
People wearing masks survey damage caused by Tropical Storm Cristobal in Orlando, Florida, on June 7.
MIAMI — STEPHANIE Kaple, who runs a homeless shelter in Key West, has a rule about disasters: You know you've reached the end of one when another begins.
Kaple was baptized by wind and water when she started her job as executive director of the Florida Keys Outreach Coalition – right before Hurricane Irma struck on Sept. 10, 2017. Devastation from the Category 5 storm was so widespread that not until this spring was she able to get through a day without invoking Irma.
Now, as hurricane season approaches its mid-August peak, there's also a pandemic to endure. Public health experts are calling Florida a COVID-19 epicenter within the U.S., which has the most cases in the world. The state reported more than 250 new deaths from the coronavirus on Thursday, setting another one-day record for new deaths for the third consecutive day.
The question is: Can the state handle a rampaging hurricane in the midst of a historic public health and economic crisis?
Florida is hurricane-tested and hardened; state officials know the drill. Emergency managers and consultants say their planning reflects the extra challenges the coronavirus presents.
Shelters must be stocked with protective gear and reconfigured to accommodate social distancing for the healthy and isolation for the sick, they say. Residents of flood-prone areas who've been told for months to hunker down at home must be coaxed outside to reach safer places.
The Florida Division of Emergency Management says it's providing masks, generators and guidance to the state's 67 counties on how to conform storm shelters for the pandemic: admit no more than 50 people, use temperature-taking and other screening methods to identify the sick, maintain at least 60 square feet for each person.
Elizabeth Zimmerman, a disaster consultant and former Federal Emergency Management Agency official, says she's optimistic about how Florida will handle hurricane season during a pandemic, "because the whole country has been very focused on COVID-19 and what we need to do to contain it."
Disaster managers emphasize a heightened need for volunteerism, philanthropy, self-reliance and sense of community to supplement government support at a time when resources at every level are stretched to the breaking point.
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They're working with the more civic-minded hotel chains to offer rooms for hurricane evacuees for free or at reduced rates, Zimmerman says. More than 500 hotels have expressed interest in providing rooms for sheltering, the FDEM said in a statement.
Florida's Red Cross chapter sent out a call for hundreds of hurricane volunteers, saying COVID-19 is depleting their ranks. Volunteers tend to be 65 and older, the group most likely to suffer fatalities from the disease.
The weather is already making news as Tropical Storm Isaias heads toward Hispaniola and, possibly Florida, where virus testing sites will be closed for safety this weekend. This season should be more active than usual, with 16 named storms ahead, including eight hurricanes, half of them Category 3 to 5, forecasters from Colorado State University predict.
To meteorologist Dennis Feltgen, that forecast plus the pandemic adds up to this: Floridians shouldn't wait to buy hurricane supplies. "You need to prepare as if you're going to get hit," says Feltgen, a spokesman for the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Feltgen says detailed guidelines for preparation and sheltering during the pandemic are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which acknowledges that preparing for a hurricane in the middle of an outbreak is particularly stressful.
The coronavirus has a powerful hold on Florida. Health officials have confirmed 461,379 cases and 6,586 deaths, the Miami Herald reported Thursday.
Since July 10, when Florida health officials began reporting COVID-19 hospitalizations, they're up 36%, according to CNBC. Miami hospitals that hit full ICU capacity are referring patients to neighboring Broward County; medical staffers and first responders are falling ill and even if they're healthy, they're exhausted.
"The last three weeks have been some of the busiest shifts in my entire life," Dr. Mark Supino, who works in the ER at Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami-Dade County's public health facility, told The Guardian last week. "We've seen some of the sickest patients we've ever seen."
Tourism-dependent Key West, with a population of about 24,100, reopened for business on June 1. Since then, the number of COVID-19 cases "has gone up dramatically," says Kaple, the homeless shelter manager. "Before the reopening, it was under 200 and now it's over 1,000 and rising."
To address concerns about COVID-19, Kaple has to provide protective equipment at the shelter and strive to avoid crowding in close quarters. When her clients must evacuate from the island ahead of a storm, they can't afford transportation and motels.
Kaple tells them to try to identify friends or relatives who might agree to share their homes briefly, "just to be safer during that time." But the pandemic adds a disincentive, as relatives and friends may hesitate to take in outsiders who, they fear, could carry a deadly disease.
"There's a million horrible things that can happen during a pandemic and we have to accept that bad things are going to happen," Kaple says. "How do I run a shelter while dealing with COVID-19 and help as many people as possible?
"We have to accept there's no end to this in sight," she says. "That's how all of us are going to have to start living our lives until there's a vaccine."