Storm-surge lessons learned the hard way from Hurricane Michael and Houston’s Hurricane Harvey have Indian Harbour Beach officials taking extra steps to plan ahead for sea level rise, flooding and storm surges.
A workshop, to be held at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 8 in the Indian Harbour Beach City Council chambers, is the next step. Funded through a grant from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), Florida Coastal Management Program, offers a chance for public comments as part of a study to assess potential impacts of sea-level rise and to identify the city’s vulnerabilities and risks from flooding and storm surge.
Recent hurricanes have reinforced the argument that storm surge can be devastating to communities, inflicting billions of dollars in damages during record-setting flooding, said Indian Harbour Beach City Manager Mark Ryan.
“Storms of this magnitude should provide some insight to the dangers of staying on a barrier island during a mandatory evacuation. While wind strength of a storm may be minimal, the storm surge can be catastrophic and deadly. The homes and businesses on the barrier island here in Brevard County would certainly experience similar catastrophic damage should storms of this nature hit here,” he said.
The city is required to regularly review its Comprehensive Plan. Indian Harbour Beach could have resubmitted its plan with no changes but instead chose to go forward with the study, also being assisted by a grant provided by the office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management under the Coastal Management Act of 1972.
The results of the study are expected to lead to the council incorporating resiliency strategies in future Comprehensive Plan amendments to be considered in 2019.
According to the DEP, for Florida’s coastal communities, resilience is the ability to recover quickly from disasters and to adapt to future conditions such as sea level rise.