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FEMA Approves Hurricane Shelter

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 20, 2009

HUDSON - The Federal Emergency Management Agency has given the go-ahead for construction to begin on a regional hurricane shelter and health care clinic planned for Arthur F. Engle Memorial Park.

FEMA sent an approval letter Wednesday to the Florida Division of Emergency Management, the office of state Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, reported.

The federal approval allows the county to move forward on the $7.7 million hurricane shelter, which has been planned for several years.

The approval requires the shelter to be built to meet standards to withstand winds from a hurricane, but won't have to meet the tougher standards for a tornado.

Fasano and other Florida officials had lobbied FEMA last year for a waiver from new national standards that would require hurricane shelters to be tornado-proof.

Those standards would have made construction of the Hudson facility and other hurricane shelters planned in Florida more expensive.

To help make the case, the state Division of Emergency Management put together a "white paper" laying out why enforcement of the new design rules "could seriously endanger the ability of the state to reduce its public hurricane shelter deficit."

The paper argued that requiring Florida to meet the new standard is not necessary because the state does not get tornadoes reaching the 200 mph intensity the new guideline was designed to address.

Pasco's shelter will double as a clinic for an estimated 70,000 uninsured and underinsured residents.

The Pasco County Health Department will have offices in the facility.

The clinic is to be operated by Premier Health Care and administered by the Pasco Primary Care Access Network.

Pasco PCAN is modeled on a program in Orange County that helps residents with little or no insurance pay for medical visits and prescriptions.

That's important because Pasco has a growing population of people who are uninsured or under insured, Fasano said Thursday.

"I'm hoping we never have to use it for a hurricane shelter," Fasano said.

The county commission has approved naming the facility after Fasano.

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