Virginia Gov. Spanberger urges preparedness ahead of hurricane season

Kate Seltzer, The Virginian-Pilot on Jun 3, 2026

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RICHMOND, Va. — With the June 1 onset of the Atlantic hurricane season, Gov. Abigail Spanberger is urging Virginians to take precautions.

Wednesday at the Virginia Emergency Operations Center, she said the first step is to be on the lookout for wireless emergency alerts and to have a plan in place for what to do in the event of an evacuation. In Hampton Roads and other parts of coastal Virginia, residents can check knowyourzoneva.org to find their evacuation zone. In the event of a hurricane or flooding event, residents can check whether the approach for their zone is to evacuate or to shelter in place.

“If you need to evacuate this hurricane season along the way, you can get your family to safety faster if you have already thought about what to do,” she said. “Where would you go? How will you get there and figure out how to reconnect with family if you’re not together at the time that a storm hits?”

Spanberger also advised making a kit with food, water and other supplies to last at least 72 hours, including whatever you might need for babies, young children, older loved ones and pets.

And the governor said Virginians should prepare their homes ahead of a storm, which could mean covering doors or windows right before an event and checking carbon monoxide detector batteries before storms are even on the radar.

“Things like cleaning out our gutters, or removing or securing loose items in the yard like lawn furniture, grills or bikes that are left outside, thinking about what might happen if the wind picks up and a storm comes in strong,” she said.

The Virginia Department of Emergency Management’s 2025 annual report found that fewer than half of Virginia localities have a full-time staff member working solely on emergency management. Instead, some localities appoint a fire or police chief to the role of emergency coordinator. Particularly after Hurricane Helene left significant damage across parts of southwest Virginia, people realized it would probably be better to have emergency managers that dedicate at least 75% of their time to those specific duties, said Jason Elmore, deputy director of strategic communications at VDEM.

“We’re hoping that number will increase,” he said.

Hampton Roads in general has a strong emergency management system in place, Elmore said.

The General Assembly rewrote legislation that passed this year that would create a dedicated emergency management fund in favor of a working group that would study the emergency management needs across the state.

“We rely a lot on federal grants from (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and such for staffing,” Elmore said. “We have positions within our agency, but also a lot of that funding is passed down through us to the local governments. … I think that part of what the study is going to do is if at some point that funding is not available, how does this get funded?”

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