Cory Schwisow, director of Monroe County Emergency Management, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
A news report about the possibility of Cuba acquiring more than 300 drones with the intent of striking targets, including targets in Key West, came out this weekend.
Schwisow said, “We definitely were notified of the news report, and it’s concerning, anything that could be a threat to the Florida Keys and our residents and tourists, and really our way of life, and our military partners down in Guantanamo Bay, and our brothers and sisters here at Naval Air Station Key West, but we have not been directly contacted by any of our state or federal partners, and we’re constantly coordinating and communicating with our local partners and local law enforcement, and the sheriff did release a similar message, but we will take every threat seriously. We don’t just work hurricanes down here. We look at every type of scenario, from hurricane response to a radiological incident, up at Turkey Point, we are continuously working throughout the year, not only with our partners, our local partners here from Monroe County, but our state and federal partners, with the migrant operations and anything that may be happening offshore of our waters. We’re continuously reaching out to our partners to see if they have any more information that we can get in front of anything, and make sure we have the correct posture to respond if anything does arise.”
Emergency Management handles anything that requires protection.
Schwisow said, “There’s always a threat from foreign domestic adversaries, regardless of what time of the year it is, and our state and federal partners, even our local partners here, do a phenomenal job of gathering that intelligence and really deciphering what’s truthful and then what actions they need to take to make sure that we can mitigate any of those threats, so I’m extremely confident in our law enforcement down here, and the team at the sheriff’s office down in Monroe County, and then our state partners and federal partners, we work on a daily basis.”
Schwisow served at Naval Air Station Key West during 2017.
He said, “What a team that we have down here. I mean, the team that we have at Naval Air Station Key West, is one of the premier air stations in the United States. I mean, we have prime airspace for our combat aviation warriors to go out there and train and make sure they’re ready to fly aboard a ship and take the fight overseas, but we have an amazing security detail, we have a specialty forces dive school down here in Key West, off of Fleming Key, and then our special operators from the Navy frequent the port operations to do combat training in some of our amazing waters down here, so not just an aviation facility, we do it all down here. Regardless of what we’re doing or operating, a training mission can turn into a real world operation with specific intelligences, and when that happens, I can reassure you right now, our federal partners are are fully engaged and looking into this threat and posturing in a manner to be able to respond if that were to where to come to that, but I’m extremely confident with the units that we have down here. I look at it as a more of a deterrent to to mess with any of our partners down here in the Florida Keys, you’re in for a rude awakening.”
Hurricane season is upon us.
Schwisow said, “I think we’re 13 days away, and one of the messages I want to just stress, there’s been a lot of El Nino talk, and talking about reduced storms, but I want to remind everybody, we had a very strong El Nino year, and that was in 2004 and what happened in 2004 we had a pretty good storm named Hurricane Wilma, so regardless of what the current atmospheric conditions are, El Nino, La Nina, whatever you want to call it, we still have a threat, and it only takes one. Hurricane Andrew, it was a late season storm, but it takes one major hurricane to really make an impactful season. So 13 days until hurricane season starts. Make sure you have that conversation with your family and your loved ones about what’s your plan, make those this week, and really take a hard look of what you need to take with you, what you need to do to prepare your home, so that when we do have an evacuation notice, that you can quickly pack up and bundle things up and hit the roads to safety. We have a great team, great team on board, great state partners, great federal partners. All the confidence in the world that, regardless of what happens down here in Monroe County, we’re going to respond quickly and we’re going to make sure we come back stronger.”
For more information, click here: https://www.monroecountyem.com/1324/Emergency-Management/