Baldwin County officials gathered in Robertsdale for a hurricane season briefing, bringing together state and local emergency management leaders just days after the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season began.
The season, which runs from June 1 through November 30, was forecast by the National Weather Service to be below normal in activity. Jason Beaman, the agency’s warning coordination meteorologist, told officials that a quiet outlook does not mean the county can afford to be complacent. He noted the Gulf Coast is struck by a major hurricane roughly once every ten years on average, meaning the region could be due for another significant storm regardless of a mild seasonal forecast. The Gulf Coast’s last Category 3 hurricane was Wilma in 2005.
Beaman walked officials through the range of warning systems the National Weather Service uses to alert residents to approaching storms, including its expanding use of social media to push out real-time updates during active weather events.
Representatives from the Alabama Emergency Management Agency also addressed the gathering, pledging continued coordination between the state and local agencies before and during storms. AEMA executive operations director Jeff Byard emphasized that local impacts are treated as state impacts, describing Alabama’s emergency response as a unified effort rather than a patchwork of separate county responses.
AEMA director Art Faulkner detailed changes the agency has made to its structure since the April 27, 2011 tornado outbreak, when the agency’s response exposed inconsistencies and what he described as ineffective coordination tactics. He said the agency had since established regional divisions across the state aimed at delivering faster, more effective support to counties hit by disasters, so that local emergency managers are not left to manage a crisis alone.
Baldwin County’s emergency management leadership outlined three priorities for the coming season: keeping the county prepared before storms arrive, building the county’s emergency management agency toward greater self-sufficiency, and restoring normal operations as quickly as possible after any disaster strikes. Officials closed the meeting by urging continued communication and preparation across the county in the months ahead, noting that readiness efforts work best when residents and agencies stay engaged well before a storm is on the horizon.