As a tropical system continues to potentially target our area, we sat down Bill Johnson, director of the Emergency Operations Center in Palm Beach County.
We asked Johnson about four myths/misconceptions that people associate with storms:
No. 1 "When people hear that a hurricane is approaching Palm Beach County, they think that they need to evacuate and get out of Palm Beach County. And that couldn't be further from the truth. If you live in an evacuation zone, we ask that you have that you evacuate, but we ask that you evacuate miles not hundreds of miles. We ask that you evacuate within Palm Beach County."
No. 2 "Don't bother taping your windows. Just leave your windows alone, close all of your windows and find an interior safe room. Taping your windows is not only a waste of time, but also it's been found that taping windows can actually cause the windows to create shards of glass rather than small bits of glass. The shards of glass are what actually make it more dangerous."
No. 3 "If we give a protective action…we are serious about it. We don't make any of those decisions lightly, so please, when we suggest or we recommend that you do something...please don't wait, don't expect that the weather is going to change, don't think that the hurricane is going to change its mind or whatever. We don't have a lot of wiggle room in those times
No. 4 "It's the water that kills people in a hurricane. A lot of people think it's actually the wind that kills people. If you look at statistics what kills people after hurricanes is storm surge during the storm and the rain water and flooding after the storm."
