Price Gouging

Where do you go when a hurricane is barreling down on your home? If you have no friends or family to stay with, most people are stuck going to hotels. Sometimes, people, whose homes could be already destroyed, have to deal with price gouging at hotels and other businesses. Under Florida law, it's illegal to lease, sell or rent living dwellings or storage units for prices that grossly exceed the average cost. I don't think hotel or gas station owners are trying to be completely heartless by overcharging, they're trying to react to the sudden business increase. However, I don't condone their actions in any way. They're taking advantage of people during a period of disaster. I think it's a good thing that the Florida Attorney General's office has cracked down on price gouging over the last few years. I believe that the state will fight harder to defeat price gouging under Governor Crist.

Hurricane Shauna

I'm not crazy. It's not Hurricane Shauna, I'm about to talk about Hurricane Jeanne. The title box is actually a 1980's movie reference. Whoever gets the reference is awsome. Hurricane Jeanne struck Florida in September of 2004. September was a long month for Florida residents; Jeanne was the fourth hurricane to hit Florida between August and September. North Central Florida felt the storm's impact. Flooding and power outages were problems for Gainesville residents. Some neighborhoods in Northwest Gainesville are below sea level and are prone to flooding.

Gabcast! Hurricane Preparedness #1

Communications Hub

The Alachua County Communications Center is really state of the art. It's in East Gainesville, located on SE 27th street in the same complex as the Alachua County Sheriffs Office. The communications center can withstand 150 mile-per-hour winds. The building is new; it was completed in January 2001. This is a really high-tech building. It has a massive generator that will automatically kick-in if the building loses power. The roof of the building is reinforced with a steel deck with three inch concrete fill. The buildings windows and doors are reinforced with hurricane-strength shutters. The building is also highly secured; it has electronic locks on every exterior door and has security cameras. This building is a mecca of emergency safety in North Central Florida. As much as I know, no other country in the area is better prepared than Alachua County. I know that a new emergency operations center is in the planning stages in Marion County. Marion County still runs its communications center out of the Marion County Sheriffs Office. It's crazy; the population is pretty much the same in both counties, but Alachua County is much more up-to-date in some areas.

Session Success

Homeowners insurance will be a little cheaper for Floridians this upcoming hurricane season. Insurance rates are going down. The Florida Legislature passed a bill lowering rates at the end of a week-long special session in January. The bill is aimed at cutting into the high prices of homeowners insurance. Since the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005, premiums have doubled and even tripled for some. The measure will help some Florida residents, but the bill's impact is still unkown. Estimated cuts range from 5-to-20 percent depending on the location of the home. I think the Florida Legislature was smart to hold their special session months before the start of hurricane season. This buffer would give both insurance companies and homeowners time to adjust to the new rules. The new law would make insurance cheaper for homeowners, but it would also be make life harder of insurance companies if they're losing money.

Dropping Policies

Despite aggressive insurance reform, The future may be grim for some Florida homeowners. The Hartford Financial Services Group says it plans to drop 38-thousand property insurance policies over the next year. That's about a third of the company's Florida policies. Hartford executives say 80-thousand Floridians, in a separate program with the AARP, will not be affected by the company's decision. The move comes just after Governor Crist and the FLorida Cabinet enacted an emergency rule that freezes insurance rates and prevents cancellations through the end of hurricane season. How can Hartford Financial do this if Crist and his cabinet have already enacted this emergency rule? They'll have to wait until the end of this hurricane season to implement its new plan.

Crazy Charlie: The Beginning

Courtesy: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration

Hurricane Charlie was the storm that woke everybody up. In the decade leading up to 2004, Florida bound hurricanes were few and far between. Hurricanes Andrew and Opal are two exeptions. We weren't prepared for Charlie because we didn't expect it; Even though it hit the Southwest Florida coast at the peak of hurricane season. The third storm of the 2004 Hurricane season killed thirty people in the United States and left parts of Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda completely destroyed. Some Southwest Florida residents decided to ignore orders to evacuate. because the storm was originally supposed to hit the Tampa area. As Florida residents would soon realize, Charlie was just the beginning of their worries. Charlie hit the Southwest Florida coast on August, 13, 2004; by the start of October, Florida residents would have already crossed paths with Hurricanes Jeanne, Francis and Ivan. The worst was yet to come.