With wind speeds that reached 120 miles per hour, Hurricane Charley slammed into Dry Tortugas National Park in August, causing extensive damage and exacerbating the park's existing maintenance backlog. The hurricane raised concerns about whether national parks have adequate staffing to prepare for such weather emergencies.
Located about 70 miles west of Key West, Florida, Dry Tortugas is a collection of small islands with considerable natural and historic significance. Amid coral reefs and abundant aquatic wildlife, the park's centerpiece is Fort Jefferson, a massive hexagonal structure that is the largest of the 19th-century American coastal forts. During Hurricane Charley, the storm surge undermined a portion of the first layer of bricks surrounding the moat wall, damaged two boat docks, and washed out a land bridge that joined Garden Key, where Fort Jefferson is located, and nearby Bush Key.
Almost immediately, park officials, firefighters, and other personnel began to repair and clean up the damage, bringing in an interagency incident command team and tapping into a special fund set aside for such emergencies.
"We help make the park right and put it back in a pre-storm condition. It's a real partnership," says Barb Stewart, an information officer with the Dry Tortugas team.
Yet the hurricane damage has reignited concerns about whether the national parks are adequately staffed and prepared to respond to natural disasters. Hurricanes are a frequent problem in the Southeast, and parks in other parts of the country face wind storms, flooding, and wildfires. In August, for example, Death Valley National Park in California had to close certain areas because of severe flooding and damage. And in Washington, D.C., Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park repeatedly has faced expensive repairs because of flooding. The emergency fund can cover the most obvious storm damage-but it may be more difficult to determine the long-term effects on already beleaguered parks. Recently, the House Appropriations Committee admitted that the park system has had to absorb the costs of "storm damage, anti-terrorism requirements, competitive sourcing activities, and other mandates…for which funds have not been provided, or provided at the expense of core operating programs."
"The administration must request - and Congress appropriate - adequate funding to compensate for the frequent acts of nature that besiege our parks," says Steven Bosak, NPCA's funding campaign director. "Otherwise, storms drown the parks and their budgets."
Even before the hurricane, Dry Tortugas' staff had been struggling to keep up with repairs, including eroding mortar, weakening brickwork, and corroding wrought ironwork. In addition, the park's remoteness (the islands are accessible only by boat or plane) complicates the process of transporting maintenance equipment from the mainland.
"Hurricane Charley really underscores the staffing needs at these parks, because when they're faced with emergencies like this, they have to drop everything else," says Mary Munson, NPCA's Sun Coast regional director. "We really appreciate the Herculean task that they were up against and their rapid response."
