Officials in Florida and the federal government are far more prepared for the onset of Hurricane Irma than they were 25 years ago when Hurricane Andrew slammed into the state, Sen. Bill Nelson said Friday.
"You think 25 years ago to Andrew, the state was not prepared," the Florida Democrat told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program. "The federal government was not prepared. I think that's the big difference today. I think the coordination between the state, local, and federal governments are all there."
There are also changes between the current situation and that following Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans, said Nelson, because the "U.S. military and the Louisiana National Guard were on separate pages."
"I think that has been taken care of now with a coordinator between the guard as well as the U.S. military," said Nelson. "There seems to be the coordination in all the emergency operation centers which I've been over several, and I think Florida is prepared."
However, he warned with Irma, "When you get 155 mile-an-hour winds, nobody is going to be prepared for that kind of destruction."
Nelson was Florida's insurance commissioner when Andrew hit in mid-August, 1992, causing insurance rates to climb not only in that state but nationwide, and he said Irma will also "definitely have an effect" on Americans' insurance rates.
"The good news is that in Andrew 25 years ago, there was no insurance backup, or in other words, a real insurance fund," said Nelson. "As a result of Andrew when insurance companies went bust, when they fled the state, when the two big ones State Farm and Allstate were shedding policies right and left, there was such massive insurance losses that the entire state of Florida was paralyzed for homeowner's insurance."
Now, a reinsurance fund is in place through the Florida Catastrophic Hurricane Fund, which has billions of dollars in reserves to keep the insurance companies going and from running out of money.
"It's much better, but your point with Texas and now Florida, FEMA is really stretched in all of it resources," the senator said. "They've actually had to pull people out of Texas and preposition them for Florida, same with supplies. So whatever has improved since Andrew 25 years ago, we're really going to get a strain this time."
A new set of building codes also have come into play since Andrew, said Nelson.
"That was one of the biggest lessons learned from 25 years ago," he said. "I'll never forget being in a helicopter over ground zero, which was downtown Homestead, Florida. I saw only two buildings left. One was the bank building, and the other one was an old Florida cracker house which had been built back in the 20s to withstand the winds. Everything, I mean everything, was leveled. It was because there were no building codes."