An inside look at the role of BOCC chair in an emergency.

I’d heard stories about former commissioners getting in the way at the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), and I have never been a first responder. Due to my ingrained respect for emergency personnel, the first thing I asked the director of Emergency Management was: “I don’t want to get in the way, so what do you need me to do?”

His answer: yes, come to the EOC, thank the team working long hours, and help us make the high-level decisions. Okay. I can do that. (And did). Those decisions were things like when to evacuate, what shelters to open, debris management decisions, curfews, emergency declarations, lobbying White House staff about FEMA rules to ensure we were compensated for debris, and so much more.

But what turned out to be my most powerful contribution was simply communicating and caring. From the days I spent personally driving from one big box store to another to fill my pickup with gallons of bleach, and delivering them – along with food and other supplies – to the roughly four-minute-long hug with an elderly woman in the recovery shelter, sobbing in my arms, to non-stop communicating with residents, it was clear that our devastated communities just needed to know that those doggone commissioners care.

Here are a few highlights of those weeks with two hurricanes back to back:

✅ I used my strategic communications background for a video to drive home that “Helene is different, you really might drown.” Many mentioned that me using my height to illustrate that water would be over my head really resonated.

✅ With 18,000 residents in Zone A, and a historically high surge of 10 feet, I count it as a win that we rescued only 500-600 people, and had ZERO deaths. (From Helene, one person died when a tree fell on him during the height of Milton winds.)

✅ Seeing that Crystal River had free meals and supplies organized that first Saturday after Helene, and realizing that unincorporated areas could only rely on county government, Holly immediately pushed to get supplies organized for Ozello and Homosassa.

✅ Bleach, MREs, hot meals, water, other supplies personally delivered daily.

✅ Using all available contacts from local to federal level to get assistance.

✅ Policy decisions to protect all residents financially with reimbursements. 

✅ Advocated for impacted residents’ needs when obstructions arose.

✅ Frequent posting of updates on my Commissioner Facebook page.

✅ Numerous TV and radio interviews, to help us get the assistance we need, and position ourselves to recover economically (tourism).

Recovery is ongoing, and I’ll be attending a resiliency workshop shortly, to work on ways to guide businesses to make their buildings able to bounce back from floods with minimal disruption. The EM team needs to do a “what can we do better next time?” once things settle down – we have an inbound Withlacoochee flood. And before next hurricane season, I will be writing a document to help future BOCC chairs jump in with better guidelines as to how to best serve our community.