Good afternoon.

We were now called to order this meeting of the public safety standing committee.

I'll begin by reading the announcements and guidelines.

Upon activation of the emergency alarm signal, all persons should immediately exit the building.

Please use the exit to the left right or front of the council chamber or the north or west stairwells outside of the rear doors of the chamber.

Do not use elevators or escalators.

At the exit in a building, security would direct everyone down 9th Street to the fenced area located between Clay and Lee Streets.

Able persons should assist visually and hearing impaired visitors with exiting the building.

Persons wishing to speak during the public comment period and all public hearings.

Are generally allowed three minutes to speak.

Persons appearing before the committee are not allowed to campaign for public office, promote by business ventures, use language of personal nature, which is also demeans any person, including comments directed at public officials or staff members that are not related to their official duties, or just a question, staff members directly.

All questions to be directed to the committee chair.

Seeing none, the public comment period is now closed.

We're now move on to the approval of the minutes.

The minutes to be approved from the May 28th, 2026 public safety standing committee meeting.

If there are no amendments or corrections, then those meeting minutes stand approved as presented.

Those minutes have been approved.

We now move on to our presentations.

We have hurricane season preparations with Edward Corner, Deputy Director of Emergency Communications Preparedness and Response.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here.

Let's see.

Okay, this is what we've got looking at for next season.

The outlook for hurricane season in 2026 is governed by a few different factors.

So we're showing it below normal season for reasons we'll get to in for a minute, but the outlook can continues to increase in accuracy as data gets better throughout the years.

Today we're looking at probably around 85% there with the ability to figure out what's going to happen now versus what happens at the end of the year.

This year we are impacted heavily by something called El Niño.

Um El Nino, and it in fact it's going to be probably El Super El Niño this year.

Uh impacts our weather kind of in a weird way just because it warms up the Pacific Ocean around the equator, two or three degrees, which changes the latitude of the um of the jet stream as it comes through and uh drastically changes our weather.

Um you can see the north or the um the top slide there.

That's basically a hurricane in the last 30 years based on La Niña, which is La Nina is a colder version of El Nino in the Pacific, whereas the one on the below is uh El Niño for the last 30 years.

Not to say that there won't be a hurricane with uh these these conditions, but the wind shear and the um the conditions won't show a uh a good pattern going forward uh during these conditions.

So El Niño is normally associated with increased heat, uh increased drought, and um heavy participant precipitation and flooding because of atmosphere loading.

Uh, it changes the location of the tropical Pacific's warmest water.

So that that shift alters the position of jet streams and storms around the world.

And for us, this really doesn't mean too much except to say that we're probably going to see an extended drought as a result because it brings down water saturation in the atmosphere well south of us.

So Louisiana, Texas, Florida.

Um, the influence is greater in the winter, actually, because of uh more storms coming from the south, increased cloud cover, and cooler daytime temperatures uh and above normal precipitation.

Um we'll get to that probably at the end of the year, and we might have a different uh different prognostic uh uh pronostication at that point.

Uh but you can think about like 1957, 1958, Richmond saw two and a half times normal snowfall.

83 was the president's day's snowfall around 16 inches, and the last super El Nina we had in 1997 saw statewide flooding and widespread damage uh as well as a snowmageddon snow uh snowmageddon in richmond received more than a foot of snow over five days so to recap last year's hurricane season uh we did have 13 named storms which of five of those were hurricanes and three category five hurricanes uh there's a couple in there I want to highlight uh made the um uh hurricane aaron actually never made landfall but killed nine people but based on uh rip tides and based on uh some of the other conditions that happened around islands and around the eastern sea or the United States.

Hurricane Melissa also was a cat five of just tremendous proportions.

It was a monster storm um that had uh and at one point it underwent extremely rapid intensification of 70 miles per hour in 24 hours um this this kind of storm is something that we can probably continue to expect just based on global warming and other factors uh so it's something that we really really need to prepare for and keep in mind so I want to highlight a few things too because we keep talking about Sam uh Safer Simpson and you know whenever whenever the hurricane comes in we see uh the weather channel and everybody else sensationalizing the fact that there is a lot of wind wind definitely is a factor within a hurricane and wind is something that can be destructive overall but the major factors that determine destruction are is water um here's a few things to chew on based on that uh flooding accounts are about 86% of direct hurricane fatalities uh while damage is generally more repairable what dam or water damage tends to destroy major infrastructure whether it's electrical water um schools you name it it is very it's a lot harder to recover from uh FEMA's rough rule and all this is uh between 60 and 90 percent of hurricane related losses are water whether it's surgeon flooding while only about uh 10 to 40 are are wind related um why is this all important and I mentioned this because there is a definite lack of people that are properly prepared for flooding within the city of Richmond and actually within the country writ large uh many people don't realize that if you do have a water based incident uh within your home your standard insurance will probably not cover it so it's something that uh we need to get out there we need to be prepared for um uh for those kind of events by buying uh national uh flood insurance the NFIP program which is uh is available to everybody within the city and is available to everybody nationwide um and it's something that I think last count that I uh that I researched a couple days ago only about two percent of the population of the city has it even though uh there are a lot more structures within that floodplain and uh in that flood zone and just kind of an illustration for that too is if if you do have an issue with with water if you do have issues with uh with the destruction of a house based on a water issue um if you're counting on FEMA to come to the rescue there is a lot of ambiguity with FEMA right now and we really don't know where that where they stand.

Also just based on on uh past experience the maximum individual assistance grants that FEMA can put out are somewhere in the range of about 43,600 for housing and then another 43,600 for other needs you know call them transportation call them uh food assistance that kind of thing so it's not high.

It's not something that will recover you and it's not something that will get you back to where you were before it's just a very basic level and it's uh it's not going to be something that uh that will make you whole um this is another another stream on that or another count on that uh that shows the impact of water on community while while wind can definitely be an emergency flooding has the potential to be the long-term disaster.

And bottom line 86% of direct hurricanes and tropical storm fatalities are attributed to water impacts.

And a couple couple here locally.

Isabel produced a peak storm surge of about nine feet in Richmond and Hurricane Juan uh a few years back caused the James to crest at 30 feet, 30 almost 31 feet.

So how are we preparing the city departments to address hurricane issues or hurricane threats?

We are currently finalizing a comprehensive emergency operation plan that was started last year as a kind of oblique result of the water crisis.

That will be presented to council sometime in late uh late summer, early fall.

It has some major changes in it.

We're very excited about some of the things that are in there.

We've also opened an emergency operation center, also what we're calling the MAC, which is designed about around the best practices that we have available to us, whether they're FEMA, state or local.

And we've used it quite extensively, actually.

We've used we've opened it for uh for thunderstorms coming through, we've opened it through uh winter weather, we've opened it for events uh just a sale fest a couple of weekends ago.

It uh it's it's uh it's really a game changer as far as uh as our ability to maintain situational awareness here within the city.

Um we are expanding and targeting better emergency management training throughout the throughout the city and throughout uh with our our partners, both in the state and other localities as well as FEMA when uh when we can.

This training is is designed to make sure that we are hitting the right elements that we need to do, that we need to have within the city uh to account for the threats that we are facing.

In that is also our emergency management liaisons that are embedded within each of our departments and divisions that help us be that conduit or that belly button in between emergencies and events and those individual departments that uh that provide assistance within that.

Where we work very closely with external partners, whether inside, outside the city, state, and federal.