- Officials with the National Hurricane Center had a message Tuesday for residents living in hurricane-prone areas: Dont tape your windows. Center officials are joining with a consumer advocate group at the National Hurricane Conference in Orlando, Fla. this week to encourage residents to skip taping their windows when a hurricane is heading their way. They believe it leads to a false sense of security and actually increases danger. Instead, residents should use proven methods such as hurricane shutters or impact-resistant windows, Bill Read, director of the National Hurricane Center, told hundreds of meteorologists and emergency management officials at the weeklong conference. Attendees are going to seminars on insurance policy and emergency communications as well as hawking hurricane-related wares such as canned food and building-hardening materials. Our goal is to break this myth, Read said, referring to taping. It does not protect your windows. At best, its an inconvenience. At worst, some people have the illusion that theyre safe ... and people can get severely hurt. Volunteer disaster junkies at heart of safety net Taping windows can create larger and deadlier shards of glass when winds blow through a home, said Leslie Chapman-Henderson, president and CEO of Federal Alliance for Safe Homes. The shards can become bigger because theyre being held together, Chapman-Henderson said. Youre wasting your time. Youre wasting your money and youre potentially increasing the danger to your home. Even some disaster management officials are guilty of advising residents to use tape on their windows. Read said when he started working in the 1970s, taping windows was still advised in hurricane brochures. That advice was eliminated from brochures in the 1980s, but it still persists today, he said. Hurricane Irenes devastation last year in Vermont and upstate New York was an impetus for the campaign, said Chapman-Henderson, because thousands of residents in the northeast taped their windows. Her group is enlisting local TV meteorologists to tell viewers Go Tapeless at the start of the coming Atlantic hurricane season, which starts in June.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 04:01:23 +0000
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