We're in the peak hurricane season right now. It will last through the end of October, and during this period, Jerry Jarrell from the National Hurricane Center wants everyone who lives in a hurricane-prone area to remember several life saving tips. The first is that we should all treat hurricanes with respect. "Hurricanes are dangerous and can kill you," he says. This should be an obvious statement, but 80 to 90% of the population now living in hurricane areas have never experienced the core of a major hurricane. People who have lived through weaker storms get a false impression of how dangerous hurricanes can be.

Feeding our sense of complacency is the fact that during the 70s and 80s, we had fewer hurricanes than usual. But meteorologists predict that hurricane frequency and intensity will almost certainly return to previous levels.

If you live in hurricane territory, Jarrell says that one of the most helpful things you can do to protect your property is to invest in storm shutters. "If a major hurricane strikes, shutters will probably save your house," he states. Shutters, he goes on to explain, can keep the wind from blowing your roof off. When a roof blows off, it doesn't happen because the wind blowing across the roof lifted it off. What really happens is that when windows and doors get blown in, wind inside the house can thrust up against the roof and blow it off. Losing your roof is something you don't want to have happen.

"Without a roof," Jarrell says, "you don't really have a house because the combination of wind and torrential rain will ruin all your possessions. Whether you have a house at all is kind of academic at this point."

Boarding up your windows and doors are a help, but in a major storm, it's far safer to have removable steel panel shutters that can be mounted in a frame permanently attached to the window. "You may not use them for five or ten years," he says, "but when you do need them you really need them." A builder's supply store or lumber yard should be able to tell you where to get these kinds of shutters.

What if you have a boat? "In the hurricane Marilyn," Jarrell points out, "almost all the people who were killed died trying to save their boats. "His basic advice on this subject is, abandon ship. "We have a term for trying to stay with your boat," he says, "The word is Kevorkian." Staying with your boat, in other words, is suicidal. "People do it because they can't imagine how terrible it is. During a hurricane, the boat will almost invariably capsize, other boats will ram into it, and the waves can easily be 40 feet or even higher if you're not in a protected harbor. People who try to ride out a storm realize they've made a terrible mistake, but by then it's usually too late." He recommends that you insure your boat, anchor it well, maybe even take it out of the water. Do not, however, try to stay with it. His final tip is, if you live in a mobile home, don't try to stay with it either. "Since they're made out of metal, people think they're strong, but they're not." In Dade County, when Andrew struck, only 3 or 4 mobile homes out of 1200 survived. For real time information on current storms, visit the Hurricane Center's Web Site at: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov.