Flagler County Emergency Management Director Jonathan Lord picked up on the irony, as Tropical Storm Erin was brewing into the season’s first major hurricane about 1,000 miles to the east. “I don’t think there’s any other county that does it that way,” he said.
But it’s also how you look at the word ‘expo,’” Lord said as the Sunshine Room, the largest at the Community Center, was already at capacity with volunteers (the lavish and free breakfast helped), residents, non-profits, government agencies and a favored private business or two rimming two sides of the room. “So inherently, Expo is a celebration of whatever it is you’re showing. In this term, expo is really just more of a way of bringing people together. It’s specifically about education.”
Emergency management has an $1,100-a-month contract with Flagler Volunteer Services to help build volunteer programs and community outreach. “They help us do training. They help us through outreach in a way that far exceeds $1,100 a month, because they use volunteers to force multiply,” Lord said. “This event is actually an output of that contract.”
Flagler Cares, the social services non-profit and coordinating agency, secured a $143,000 Long-Term Recovery Grant from the American Red Cross for Flagler Volunteer Services as part of the recovery efforts following Hurricanes Helene and Milton in 2024. “With this support,” a release stated after the grant was secured, “the two organizations will work collaboratively to identify remaining unmet needs in the wake of the storms and to build a sustainable, community-based disaster recovery and readiness network in Flagler County. Their joint efforts will focus on connecting nonprofits, faith-based groups, businesses, and individual volunteers to strengthen the county’s long-term disaster resilience.”
That’s what Tuesday’s expo was all about. (With the money, Flagler Volunteer Services hired Jay Sanchez as Disaster Preparedness Lead and Danielle Anderson as Long-Term Recovery Lead, and both coordinated the event.) Though it is the first of its kind in Flagler County, it’s the sort of community that makes these events possible that had convinced Lord years ago to move here and be the county’s emergency management director. “I don’t know if all these people here are volunteers or not, but it’s this community, it’s our active senior community that kind of intrigued me about Flagler County in the first place, kind of got me interested,” Lord said.
“The number one goal is just to educate the community, saying, Hey, listen, we are at risk for disasters, particularly hurricanes,” Lord said. “These are the resources in your community that can help you get better prepared.”
A dozen and a half individuals, many of them well known in the community, addressed the capacity crowd, more than half of which was still there by the end of the three-hour event. Speakers included Lord, Sheriff Rick Staly, Carrie Baird, the CEO at Flagler Cares, David Bossardett, Flagler schools’ safety coordinator, Amy Carotenuto, the executive director of the Flagler Humane Society, and of course Suzy Gamblain, the long-time director of Flagler Volunteer Services. She got an Excellence in Volunteerism award from Volunteer Florida, also known as the Florida Commission on Community Service.
The event was not revelatory: unless you are new to Florida or Flagler County, you would not have heard anything you do not hear repeated every year at least half a dozen times in one media or another–several dozen times on reputable social media: be prepared, “mandatory evacuation” doesn’t necessarily mean mandatory, but “heed the warnings,” as Staly put it (“if you decide to stay and your house is flooding or something happens, we can’t get to you,” the sheriff said, “because once the winds sustain at 40 miles an hour, we’ll pull in our deputies in because it’s not safe for them.” When shelters open, they’re open to all, including pets, the Humane Society has its own storm-preparedness resources available to residents, and so on.
The sheriff was especially grateful for the cooperation that prevails locally among public safety and public service agencies. It is not common, he said, describing his prior experience in orange County. “This is a completely different world for public safety, and it’s really nice, because we all get along,” he said. “We all work together to get the job done and serve the community.”
One of those organizations is Flagler Beach’s Flagler Strong, whose volunteers emerged out of the wreckage of Hurricane Matthew, when the barrier island was cut off from the rest of the county, and numerous people needed help in their homes, as co-founder Traci Callahan-Hennessey described it. “The whole town was out of power, and nobody was coming,” she said. “So we just started door-knocking, checking on neighbors.” The organization became a non-profit in 2022 and has broadened its services. It runs the weekly farmers’ market on South 2nd Street to raise money.
Curiously absent, however, were local government representatives other than Lord, such as city managers or city officials who might have provided a more direct and useful look at municipal responses, or lack of responses, in the immediate aftermath of emergencies. But so it went, from one speaker to another, including Mike Boylan of the famously cluttered and popular Mike’s Weather Page. His advice: don’t focus on the number of storms predicted. Focus on preparedness and proper response when it happens.
To that end, a small mountain of preparedness bags welcomed participants at the entrance of the Sunshine Room. They could help themselves. Inside, they’d find a small first aid kit, flushable wipes, Narcan (the neutralizing agent in case of overdose or other medical emergencies), a roll of paper towels, a roll of toilet paper of course, tiny pellets of compressed towels, an emergency blanket packed into a tiny sleeve, and matches. The only thing missing was a storm.
Ld says
When and on what media was this event advertised?
FlaglerLive says
Here, at Ask Flagler, at the Observer, etc.