Hurricane Awareness Info from Virginia Beach Delegate
After Virginia Governor Ralph Northam declared a state of emergency Monday in preparation for possible damage from Hurricane Dorian, coastal areas began taking the steps necessary to help residents protect their property and escape possible devastation.
Now, on Thursday, as Dorian churns up the eastern coast from Florida toward Virginia — after leaving devastating destruction in the Bahamas, flooding is a very real possibility even if there is no actual landfall in the Commonwealth.
Virginia Beach Delegate Glenn Davis, no stranger to hurricanes and coastal storms, sent an email to his constituents with helpful information:
On Monday, the Governor issued a state of emergency in preparation for the potential impacts of Hurricane Dorian.
You may recall last year that the Governor ordered an evacuation for parts of Hampton Roads. That order sent tens of thousands of residents along Virginia’s eastern seaboard to state websites to check their flood evacuation zone, crashing state servers for days.
When the state servers crashed, I asked the Secretary of Public Safety to email me the Flood Zone Maps which I hosted within my business online file system on Google’s cloud infrastructure. I sent links to those files out across the state; needless to say, those servers never crashed.
Last year, I introduced HB 2595. This legislation would have required “information provided by executive branch agencies, to which citizens would reasonably require access during a state of emergency” be transitioned from from state premise-based servers to cloud-based server solutions. Unfortunately, even with the support of Virginia’s information technology system professionals, this bill got stuck in committee.
So here we are again. While it now looks like Virginia may be spared from the direct path of Hurricane Dorian, there could still be significant flooding. Additionally, the hurricane season is just beginning and we all need to be prepared. Which means not relying on Virginia’s outdated server infrastructure to provide life saving information when an emergency strikes.
Like last year, I have uploaded the following maps to my online business file system in case Virginia’s system should crash again. You can click on them to check your Evacuation Zone and download the maps.
Virginia Beach Hurricane Evacuation Zone
Full Virginia Hurricane Evacuation Zone Map
As Hurricane Dorian approaches the region, please take the steps necessary to keep you and your family safe.
Check for the latest as the hurricane nears Virginia’s coastal region:
–Updates from the National Hurricane Center
Cover photo: National Weather Service
