🚩 Hurricane Season Is Officially Here: The Prep List for Special Needs Families
Hurricane season opened yesterday and runs through November 30. NOAA is calling for a below-normal year: 8 to 14 named storms, 3 to 6 hurricanes, 1 to 3 of them major. A developing El Niño is the reason. Warmer water in the Pacific throws more wind shear over the Atlantic, and fewer storms hold together. You can track all of it at the source, the National Hurricane Center at nhc.noaa.gov, which forecasts every Atlantic storm from its building on FIU's South campus in Sweetwater.
Below-normal is a number, not a promise. 1992 was a below-normal season too. It produced just 6 named storms, and the first one was Andrew, a Category 5 that flattened Homestead. The first name on the 2026 list is Arthur. The last is Wilfred. You only need to meet one of them.
You know the standard prep list. Water, batteries, shutters, a full tank of gas, the canned goods nobody eats until they have to. Every family in Miami-Dade has that list. It’s on the back of the phone bill. For a family raising a child with a disability, that list is the minimum, not the plan. The plan is the part nobody hands you.
So here’s the plan.
Register for the EEAP now, not when the cone shows up
The Emergency & Evacuation Assistance Program is the county’s registry for residents who can’t evacuate on their own. It’s free. It covers specialized transportation, a medical needs shelter assignment, and a wellness call after the storm if you shelter in place. Children qualify. If your child depends on electric medical equipment, needs specialized transport, or can’t get to a bus pickup on their own, this is the program.
You register once and you’re a lifelong member. The county re-certifies your information twice a year, and it’s on you to report changes by phone or email. Applications come in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole, and in Braille or large print on request. Each eligible person in the home needs a separate application.
The deadline is the part people miss. Registration closes before an evacuation order goes out, so the window to register isn’t during the storm. It’s now, in the calm, while you’re reading this. Wait for the cone and you’ve waited too long.
Reach the EEAP:
The medical needs shelter is a refuge of last resort
Miami-Dade staffs its medical needs shelters with County Health Department and Jackson Memorial nurses, and it keeps the location private, so it doesn’t fill with people who belong in a general shelter. You learn where yours is in your EEAP acceptance letter.
Read what the county tells you in writing. The shelter offers basic medical care, not hospital care. Special needs enhanced beds and cots come in limited supply. Higher-acuity patients go to a partner hospital. Whatever your child uses every day, you pack it and you bring it.
And you stay. A caregiver has to remain with the evacuee through the entire emergency. The shelter runs lean on staff, so the county tells you up front: you’re not dropping your kid off, you’re sheltering together. Plan your work, your other kids, and your own supplies around that fact.
Then there’s the part the county can’t pack for you. A child who can’t sit still in a line, or can’t be moved without a wheelchair, or panics in a gym with 400 strangers and fluorescent light and no walls and none of the routine that holds the day together, is its own emergency.
Treat the comfort kit like it’s medical, because for your kid it is. Noise-canceling headphones. The tablet charged, the videos downloaded so you’re not fighting for a signal. A battery bank that runs it for days, not hours. The specific blanket, the specific snack, the chew or fidget, whatever the regulation tool is in your house. You know the list. Write it down before the pharmacy line and the gas line and the boarded windows eat your days up.
Know what FPL’s program is, and what it isn’t
If your child runs on a concentrator, a ventilator, a feeding pump, or refrigerated medication, FPL’s Medically Essential Service Program belongs on your list. A physician certifies the need, you re-apply every year, and FPL flags the account.
Here’s what the flag buys. 30 extra days to pay a past-due bill. A phone call before FPL cuts service for non-payment. A pre-storm notification before a major hurricane. That’s the list.
Here’s what it doesn’t buy, in FPL’s own words on the form your doctor signs. It does not guarantee uninterrupted service. It does not give your account priority for restoration after a storm. The program is a flag on a file, not a generator in the garage. The backup power is on you. Enroll, yes, then plan as if the lights come back when they come back, because that’s the deal you’re signing.
And if a generator is your backup, it runs outside, away from windows and doors, never indoors or in the garage. Carbon monoxide is a leading killer after a storm, and you can’t smell it coming.
Reach FPL:
- Apply or renew: fpl.com/support/medically-essential-service.html
- Email: FPL-MESP@fpl.com
- Mail the signed form to FPL: Attn: Medically Essential Service Program CSF/GO, PO Box 029100, Miami, FL 33102-9100
- Report an outage at 1-800-468-8243 (1-800-4-OUTAGE)
- Customer service is 1-800-226-3545
The kid kit, the documents, the 1-page profile
Pack 7 days of every medication, not 3. Refrigerated meds get a cooler and a plan for ice. Pack the kit your child needs, then pack it again for the car, because the shelter and the road are 2 different challenges.
Put the paper in one waterproof bag and a copy in the cloud: - Insurance policy and policy number - Every prescription - The IEP - Current medical records - The pediatrician and specialist contacts
The last item is the one almost nobody makes: a 1-page profile of your child. In an evacuation, the person helping your child won’t know your child. That page does the talking when your kid can’t, and when you’re too busy to. Put on it: - Name and diagnosis - How they communicate - What triggers them - What calms them down - What the medications are and when they’re due
A hurricane plan isn’t paperwork. For our families, it’s the routine you get to keep when the storm takes everything else. Make it now, while there’s nothing on the radar. 🌀