County and local officials took part in a hurricane preparedness seminar on Monday titled "Together We Prepare."

While the room at American Red Cross headquarters where the panel was held was filled with emergency responders, weather experts and representatives of agencies that serve the community, not much new and useful information resulted.

Dire warnings that the state is due for a major hurricane summon up nightmarish visions of post-Katrina devastation.

The county's Office of Emergency Management, funded at $282,000 for 2006, continues to be vague about preparations in place in the event of a major storm or natural disaster.

County OEM Coordinator Harry Conover offered that the number of signs indicating evacuation routes will double and will be made larger.

While that might be helpful as you and your family flee fierce hurricane winds and flooding, you're likely to have no clear idea of where you are headed, because the OEM hasn't done its job. If there is a plan, that information is not being shared with residents.

Much more is needed in the way of public information and preparedness.

How about organizing town meetings to facilitate the sharing of information and to encourage towns and neighborhoods to organize a response to a major hurricane? That strategy would foster a network among first responders and residents.

According to Conover, the county's undocumented, non-English-speaking population is at special risk. Agreed, but what about those in hospitals, nursing homes, homeless shelters, with disabilities? How about schools, day-care centers? Heck, what about the rest of us?

In a post-9/11, post-Katrina world, it's unconscionable that residents of the county don't know exactly what to do, where - exactly - to head, in the event of a major hurricane.

Residents, especially the most vulnerable, deserve better than that.

The very real fear is that there is no comprehensive plan, that we are no safer now than we were before Katrina's devastation.

Making detailed plans, making them public, including posting them on the Web, holding information sessions in the community, is the only way to ensure residents' well-being.

Telling them to simply turn on the radio and head west just doesn't cut it.