Editorial: Hurricane season 2006

We note points of light at the outset of this hurricane season.

One is a nonprofit Internet service for people to plan to find or offer shelter in the event of a hurricane. The service, called Hurricane Friends, is an option to local public shelters or motels. It is launched by residents of Lakeland who were grateful for refuge with strangers in Alabama amid Hurricane Jeanne.

For a fee of $9.99, which goes to cover background checks for felonies, participants at www.hurricanefriends.com can specify what kind of shelter they have to offer or may need.

Meanwhile, members of the marching band at North Naples' Gulf Coast High School are packing up old uniforms and shipping them to the Bogalusa High School Lumberjacks Marching Band in Bogalusa, La., which was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.

What a nice thing to do. Gulf Coast band members are eager to see the promised pictures of their old uniforms being used and enjoyed someday soon on the other Gulf coast.

Meanwhile, in Immokalee, Collier County government, churches and charities are banding together to make sure Wilma-damaged homes have their roofs repaired. The county also is working to stockpile supplies and provide emergency power to a radio station sponsored by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to inform migrant workers who knew too little, too late to help themselves in the past.

There is a lot to like about the unified voice that officials in Collier, Lee and Bonita Springs are using to persuade citizens to make plans to help themselves.

That message was helped by statewide tax-free days for buying hurricane supplies.

State government is taking a firmer hand with gas stations, whose post-storm importance has been made clear by fuel shortages. Though gas usually was on hand, it could not be pumped into cars, trucks and buses without electricity, which now will be provided by generators to be made mandatory — by 2007.

Legislation signed into law by Gov. Jeb Bush also aims to add backup power at some public shelters and expand shelter space and emergency operations centers.

It's not up to government to bail out everyone's every need. Working together and thinking ahead can work wonders.