{"id":280864,"date":"2026-05-22T14:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T14:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/280864\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T14:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T14:11:09","slug":"florida-health-centers-get-ready-for-hurricane-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/280864\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida health centers get ready for hurricane season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/app.publicnewsservice.org\/staff\/e6646307-a3a1-405b-99c4-d54a7307fbb7\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Trimmel Gomes<\/a>, Florida News Connection<\/p>\n<p>With hurricane season beginning June 1, Florida community health centers gathered in Tampa last week to sharpen their emergency plans and share lessons learned from past disasters.<\/p>\n<p>The two-day <a href=\"https:\/\/fachc.org\/2026emsummit\/#1678822375269-56dff915-181d\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Health Emergency Management Summit<\/a> wrapped up last Friday. It was was organized with help from International Medical Corps, a global humanitarian organization.<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Fort-Myers-Ian-flooding-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Flooding and damage in Lee County from Hurricane Ian (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer Third Class Riley Perkofski, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, edited for size, via flickr)\" class=\"wp-image-11792\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1.7778128864958054;width:425px;height:auto\"  \/>Flooding and damage in Lee County from Hurricane Ian (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer Third Class Riley Perkofski, <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/2.0\/deed.en\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<\/a>, edited for size, via flickr)<\/p>\n<p>Jose Perez, associate director of facilities for Healthcare Network in Naples, said Hurricane Ian exposed a gap in his facility\u2019s planning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne thing I did not see coming was water,\u201d Perez recounted. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t in a flood zone but the water came from underneath the floor drain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Perez noted the experience changed how the facility prepares. He suggested health centers should test generators weekly and have backup plans for vaccines. His facility also plans to use sandbags around floor drains.<\/p>\n<p>Rebecca Allman, chief compliance and quality officer for Langley Health Services, said a tornado forced similar changes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnfortunately, we did have to go through a tornado that destroyed one of our buildings, so that was definitely a learning curve and a learning lesson for us that we had not gone through before,\u201d Hallman explained. \u201cNow we have tornado drills that we put in place every year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hallman stressed partnerships between health centers are critical because they allow facilities to share supplies when a storm hits. She added one of the biggest challenges is getting staff to treat emergency drills as if they are real.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe more you get into the drill, the more you\u2019ll learn where the gaps are,\u201d Hallman underscored.<\/p>\n<p>Florida News Connection is a bureau of the\u00a0Public News Service. Banner photo: Flooding in Florida from Hurricane Ian (iStock image).<\/p>\n<p>Sign up for The Invading Sea newsletter by <a href=\"https:\/\/lp.constantcontactpages.com\/su\/vIC9GhU\/theinvadingsea\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">visiting here<\/a>. If you are interested in submitting an opinion piece to The Invading Sea, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theinvadingsea.com\/2026\/05\/22\/hurricane-season-florida-community-health-centers-flooding-generators-emergency-plans\/mailto:ncrabbe@fau.edu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">email Editor Nathan Crabbe<\/a>. To learn more about flooding, watch the short video below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By\u00a0Trimmel Gomes, Florida News Connection With hurricane season beginning June 1, Florida community health centers gathered in Tampa&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[119708,2927,28,99842,30,29,63438,6027,1847,119709],"class_list":["post-280864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-emergency-plans","tag-flooding","tag-florida","tag-florida-community-health-centers","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-generators","tag-hurricane-ian","tag-hurricane-season","tag-international-medical-corps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}