Hurricane Season Preparedness in Manatee and Hillsborough Counties: What Congress Can Do After Helene and Milton

The back-to-back devastation of Hurricanes Helene and Milton in the fall of 2024 exposed something that residents of Manatee and Hillsborough counties already suspected: our disaster preparedness and response systems are not keeping pace with the intensity of modern storms. Homes were flooded, roads were impassable for days, and FEMA assistance was slow, confusing, and inconsistent.

With hurricane season returning every year, the question for Florida’s congressional delegation is not whether another major storm will hit — it is whether Washington will be ready when it does.

What Helene and Milton Exposed: The Federal Failures After the Storm

The failures after Helene and Milton were not just logistical — they were structural. FEMA’s individual assistance programs have eligibility rules so complex that many homeowners cannot navigate them without professional help. The application process requires documentation that displaced families often cannot access when their homes are underwater or inaccessible. Disaster loan programs through the SBA require collateral that families who just lost everything do not have.

And the debris removal and rebuilding contracts that should have been moving within days of landfall often took weeks to execute due to federal procurement rules designed for peacetime purchasing — not disaster response. Communities in south Hillsborough County waited weeks for debris removal that blocked roads, prevented residents from returning home, and left neighborhoods vulnerable to secondary flooding from the next rainfall.

Meanwhile, the state’s ability to fund recovery was compounded by the ongoing insurance crisis — many homeowners had no flood coverage, had claims denied, or found their insurers had already exited the Florida market. This is where federal disaster policy and the insurance market intersect in devastating ways for ordinary families. Read more about Florida’s insurance crisis and what Congress must do →

The Stafford Act — the primary federal law governing disaster response — was written in 1988. It has not kept pace with the scale, frequency, or complexity of modern disasters. Reforming the Stafford Act to give states more flexibility and speed in disaster response is one of the most important things Congress can do before the next major storm.

The National Flood Insurance Program: What’s Broken and What Reform Would Mean for FL-16

Most homeowners in Florida’s 16th District know that standard homeowners insurance does not cover flood damage. Flood insurance is a separate product — and for the majority of FL-16 homeowners in flood zones, it is purchased through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), a federal program administered by FEMA.

What the NFIP is: Congress created the National Flood Insurance Program in 1968 because private insurers would not offer flood coverage in high-risk areas at affordable rates. The NFIP allows homeowners in participating communities to purchase federally backed flood insurance. Lenders typically require NFIP flood insurance for mortgaged properties in designated Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHAs). In Manatee and Hillsborough counties — with extensive Gulf Coast exposure, bay frontage, and river watersheds — millions of dollars in flood insurance premiums flow through the NFIP each year.

What’s broken: The NFIP is approximately $20 billion in debt — a structural insolvency that Congress has repeatedly “fixed” by extending its authorization without addressing the underlying math. The program’s rate-setting methodology has historically underpriced flood risk in high-risk areas, creating subsidized premiums that do not reflect actual risk. FEMA’s Risk Rating 2.0 reform — phased in beginning in 2021 — attempts to price risk more accurately, but the result has been significant premium increases for many FL-16 homeowners who were previously paying below-market rates.

What reform should look like: Congress has been debating NFIP reauthorization for years without passing a long-term solution. Peters believes reform must:

• Phase in actuarially sound rates in a way that gives homeowners time to adapt — rather than sudden large increases that force people out of coverage
• Create meaningful affordability protections for lower-income homeowners in flood zones who cannot absorb large premium increases
• Invest in flood mitigation infrastructure — buyouts of the most vulnerable properties, elevation grants, and wetland restoration — that reduces risk rather than just insuring it
• Encourage private flood insurance market development to provide competition and coverage options beyond the NFIP monopoly
• Update FEMA flood maps to reflect current risk — many FL-16 communities are operating on flood maps that are decades out of date and do not account for sea level change or updated storm surge modeling

Stalling NFIP reauthorization — as Congress has done repeatedly through short-term extensions — leaves FL-16 homeowners in an insurance limbo and prevents the structural reforms the program desperately needs. Peters will push for a long-term reauthorization with real reforms, not another short extension that kicks the problem to the next Congress.

Hurricane Season Preparedness Guide for Manatee and Hillsborough Residents

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30, with peak activity typically occurring between mid-August and mid-October. For FL-16 residents, preparation before a storm is far more effective — and far less expensive — than recovery after one. Here is a practical guide:

Know your evacuation zone. Manatee and Hillsborough counties use a lettered evacuation zone system (A through F in Hillsborough; A through E in Manatee), with Zone A representing the highest-risk areas closest to the coast, bay, and river flooding zones. Look up your zone before hurricane season starts — not when a storm is approaching:

• Manatee County evacuation zones: mymanatee.org/emergency
• Hillsborough County evacuation zones: hcfl.gov/emergencymanagement

Know your shelter options. Both counties maintain lists of public emergency shelters, including pet-friendly shelters and special needs shelters for residents who require medical assistance during evacuation. These locations change based on storm track — sign up for county emergency alerts to receive real-time shelter announcements.

Register for disaster assistance before you need it. Create a FEMA account at DisasterAssistance.gov before a storm strikes. Having your account set up, with your insurance policy numbers, property documents, and contact information already entered, dramatically speeds up the assistance application process after a disaster.

Check your flood insurance status. Review your NFIP or private flood insurance policy now — before storm season. There is a 30-day waiting period for new NFIP policies to take effect, so purchasing coverage when a storm is approaching is too late. If you are in a flood zone and do not have flood insurance, contact your homeowners insurance agent or visit floodsmart.gov to explore options.

Build a 72-hour kit. FEMA recommends that all households maintain a 72-hour emergency supply kit including: water (one gallon per person per day), non-perishable food, medications, important documents (in waterproof storage), phone chargers and backup batteries, flashlights, and cash. After a major storm, ATMs and card payment systems may be offline for days.

What John Peters Will Fight For in Congress

John Peters is committed to reforming federal disaster policy so that it actually works for families in the first critical weeks after a storm — not just in the months of bureaucratic processing that follow. He will fight for:

• Streamlining FEMA individual assistance applications. The current application process is so complex that FEMA’s own surveys show large percentages of eligible applicants give up before completing it. Peters supports pre-disaster registration, simplified documentation requirements, and surge staffing for disaster registration centers.
• Stafford Act reform. The 1988 Stafford Act needs to be modernized to give states more flexibility, speed debris removal contracting, and eliminate procurement rules that slow response in the critical first 72 hours after landfall.
• Long-term NFIP reauthorization with real reform. Not another short-term extension — a genuine long-term reauthorization that addresses affordability, updates flood maps, funds mitigation, and creates a path to a functional private flood insurance market.
• Flood mapping and mitigation investment. Federal investment in updated flood maps and pre-disaster mitigation — seawall improvements, wetland restoration, drainage upgrades, and voluntary buyouts of the highest-risk properties — reduces losses and insurance costs over the long term.
• MacDill AFB civilian disaster coordination. MacDill Air Force Base is a critical asset for Tampa Bay disaster response. Peters supports a formal civilian-military coordination framework that activates MacDill’s logistics, communications, and medical capabilities for civilian disaster response in the first hours after a storm.

Disaster preparedness is not a partisan issue. Nobody cares whether the helicopter bringing supplies is red or blue. John Peters will work with any member of Congress who is serious about protecting Florida communities from the next storm.

See John Peters’ full platform →