Lee County emergency managers outline hurricane-season response, incident-action planning at Fort Myers Beach meeting

Fort Myers Beach — Lee County Emergency Management representatives told the town’s Public Safety Committee on Jan. 23 that local agencies should lead initial disaster response and coordinate upward for additional resources as needed, while the county can help with logistics, unified messaging and specialized teams.

Caroline Briones, deputy chief of readiness for Lee County Emergency Management, told the committee that “every disaster starts and ends locally” and described how the county fits into a standardized response framework that moves from municipal to county to state (Florida Division of Emergency Management) and federal (FEMA) assistance as incidents scale.

Briones reviewed the National Incident Management System (NIMS) framework the county uses to standardize resource typing, command and control, and communications. She said incident-action plans (IAPs) are developed daily in a 24-hour planning cycle during active incidents: objectives are drafted, tactics are established, plans are reviewed by unified command, then briefed to crews before execution. The county urged Fort Myers Beach to send an agency liaison to the Lee County Emergency Operations Center (EOC) during major incidents so town leadership can file resource requests quickly and follow status in real time.

The presentation covered operational tools and processes the county uses: typed resource requests (to avoid ambiguous language when asking for engines, tenders or other assets), a logistics section that routes mutual-aid and contracted resources, a Joint Information Center (JIC) for coordinated public messaging, and the Lee Prepares app and county alerting systems for outbound notices. Briones said those county systems should be the primary, authoritative channels and encouraged the town to repost county messaging to maintain a unified public message.

Briones and other speakers described the county’s Community Coordination Teams (CCTs), a newer program that places trained county staff in impacted neighborhoods after an event to liaise with local stakeholders, report needs, and help manage comfort stations and localized services.

Fire leadership and town staff expanded on tactics and staffing: the fire department explained how incident commanders, operations chiefs, logistics and safety officers fit into the daily planning cycle and emphasized the need to pre-stage supplies and personnel when a storm threatens. The chief said staffing levels are adjusted to incident severity, noting, “Typically, we’ll at least double staff.”

Committee members discussed local input channels — including the possibility of condo- or HOA-level liaisons to report building status — and the limits of communications after large events when cellular service can be sporadic. Briones and county staff recommended encouraging residents to sign up for county alerts and to use 2-1-1 as an additional nonemergency information line.

Why it matters: Fort Myers Beach remains vulnerable to hurricanes and coastal flooding. The county’s emphasis on standardized terminology, daily incident-action planning, and a single county-led information feed aims to reduce duplication, speed resource allocation and provide clearer guidance to residents and visitors during and after storms.

What’s next: County staff said they can provide trainings for town staff on resource-typing and the county portal used for requests, and they recommended the town identify a decision-capable liaison to take a seat at the EOC during incidents. The county also said it will continue to develop and deploy Community Coordination Teams post-event.

Sources: Presentation and Q&A with Caroline Briones, Deputy Chief of Readiness, Lee County Emergency Management; remarks by the Fort Myers Beach Fire Department chief and town staff at the Fort Myers Beach Public Safety Committee meeting on Jan. 23.