County Leaders Give Important Hurricane Prep Tips At Miami-Dade EOC

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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – A new hurricane season begins on Friday.

The need to prepare your home and your family is getting extra attention this year after last season's hit from Hurricane Irma.

County leaders gave residents some very important reminders at the Miami-Dade Emergency Operations Center.

"Tomorrow is the beginning of the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season through November 30t h," said Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez.

A quick and slick video played, to remind one and all to get ready now.

Have enough supplies for three full days and know your evacuation zone, some of the important tips coming at the annual hurricane preparedness news conference.

"Though we dodged the worst part of Irma, we learned important lessons," said Gimenez. "We are going to reinforce our efforts to create a more resistant community that is prepared."

On that agendy, preparation and management of shelters was a problem as Irma loomed.

Shelters did not open on time and critics say they did not operate well, with confusion about which were open and which were not.

"It took us a while to open up 100,000 bed capacity in our shelters," Gimenez explained. "There were deficiencies in that area."

A solution to that problem is to go to the people who know the shelters well; the school principals and assistant principals.

"We have now trained 2000 county employees to operate shelters," Gimenez said. "We worked with the school system to open and designate more schools to be shelters. We have trained 300 school principals and assistant principals to be shelter managers."