WEST PALM BEACH — Hurricane Season kicks off in a little more than two weeks. And in preparation for it, thousands of emergency management operations leaders from around the state, the country and Caribbean flock to the annual Florida Governors Hurricane Conference to get needed certifications and learn new tricks of the trade including the latest meteorology advancements.
This is the 39th year for a conference that bills itself as the premier hurricane conference, drawing the largest gatherings of any hurricane conferences.
But there’s a noticeable difference at this year’s conference — the lack of trainers from the federal government.
In red lettering, the word “canceled” is printed more than one dozens times next to descriptions of training sessions organizers had hopped to offer this year such as: Hurricane Readiness for Coastal Communities; Practical Lessons from Historical Hurricanes; Helping You Help Others. Multiple workshops are canceled as well.
The cancellation list is impacting more than one-quarter of the hurricane conference’s original 40 sessions. The cancelled sessions are due to cutbacks in Federal Funding under the Donald Trump Administration.
Trump typically spends his weekends at his winter residence is nearby on the island of Palm Beach. But frozen travel budgets for other federal workers means some two dozen workers with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service had to skip out of this year’s events and training sessions — training sessions they were supposed to be leading.
Event Coordinator John Jameson said the cancellations will not impact certifications: “The weather service trainings and things like that, are not required for emergency managers to get their certification to do emergency management.”
Some 2,000 people have registered for the week-long event hailing from 53 of Florida’s 67. Emergency workers from half the states. There are contingents of people from Caribbean nations, Canada and even the United Kingdom, Jameson said.
“So there’ll be public information officers here. There’s emergency managers here,” he said. “There’s a lot of fire, rescue, police. Anybody that deals with the aftermath or the planning for a hurricane is going to be involved here.”
But it’s not just hurricanes that attendees are training for, Jameson said, but the programs can also be applied to other natural disasters such as tornados and wildfires.
Headlining Wednesday’s event is Phil Klotzbach, the meteorologist from Colorado State University. Klotzbach specializes in Atlantic Basin seasonal hurricane forecasts.
Klotzbach is expected to share his predictions for the up-coming hurricane season at the conference.
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