More Devastating Hurricanes Possible

Complacency Worries Experts at Symposium in Laurel

A satellite image Aug. 28 shows Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico. Some officials say similar storms could occur. (National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration Via Getty Images)

Enmeshed as they still are in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, disaster planners and hurricane forecasters have no choice but to prepare for this year's possible foes: Alberto, Beryl, Chris, Debby, Ernesto and the rest.

All signs point to another severe season, though the ferocity and number of hurricanes is impossible to predict, top U.S. forecasters and emergency planners said yesterday at a symposium in Maryland.

"I think a lot of people say you could never have the same death and damages as we did last season," Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center and Tropical Prediction Center, said during a break in the conference at the Johns Hopkins University campus in Laurel. "I'm here to say it could happen."

Nature is signaling another active season. La Niña is back, judging by telltale cooler water on the surface of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Surface water in the Atlantic, meanwhile, is warmer. Conditions are similar to those recorded ahead of last year's record-breaking string of named storms, said David L. Johnson, assistant administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and director of the National Weather Service.

"I've got a bunch of hardworking scientists who are crunching those numbers right now" and aiming to make their prediction public May 22, about a week before hurricane seasons officially begins, Johnson said.

Confidence-boosting was the undercurrent of the day-long event, which drew about 300 emergency management workers from across the United States to sessions heavy on "lessons learned" from last year. Several Marylanders said they welcomed the brief remarks by R. David Paulison, nominated to replace Michael D. Brown as chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"A person stepping in, experienced with emergency management and in working with local emergency management, will be able to bring confidence," said John W. Droneburg III, director of the Maryland Emergency Management Agency.

Only twice in recorded weather history has the Chesapeake Bay region taken a direct hit from a storm that was still hurricane strength at landfall. Residents base evacuation decisions on memories of past surges, most recently the eight-foot surge and inland flooding spawned by Hurricane Isabel in 2003.

Complacency, development near coastal areas and millions of people living in the region concern Mayfield.

"I'm really worried about the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast because [a hurricane] is such a rare event . . . and you all worry about a lot of things besides hurricanes," he said.

His agency will use a new tool this year, a 24-hour surge tracker to help emergency responders in the expected path of a storm. A computer-generated model predicting the path of the storm and the surge in the 24 hours before landfall will be available to state and local emergency management officials, Mayfield said in an interview.

The idea, he said, is that officials in communities in the storm's path will be better able to predict where to position emergency response teams, equipment and food. Gulf Coast communities did not have such detailed information during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Mayfield said he hesitated before going public with the new tracking tool out of fear that local officials would consider it etched in stone and plan evacuations accordingly -- and perhaps erroneously. "I don't want local emergency managers to make evacuation calls based on that. It's not going to be accurate," he said.

If a hurricane thrashed its way to the mid-Atlantic coast, forecasters still would not have the tools to reliably predict its point of landfall.

"Do you think we're going to be able to tell if it's going to clip the Chesapeake Bay or crash into Cape Cod?'' Mayfield said. "Nobody's going to be able to tell you where it's going to hit. Nobody."