Cory Schwisow, interim 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.
September is Hurricane Preparedness Month.
Schwisow said, “Information gets pushed down from the Florida Division of Emergency Management, and we are posting tips on a daily basis on our Monroe County Emergency Management Facebook page, and our last post gives a very detailed checklist of things that you might need to look at when making your hurricane kit or just preparing to plan for you, yourself, your kids, your pets and the whole nine yards. So it’s a very, very great tool to have in your toolbox.”
Are sales tax exemptions still a reality?
Schwisow confirmed, “It is. In years prior, there’s two designated times at the beginning of hurricane season, and right before the peak season in September, there was a tax free time period. But if you go to our site, they actually have a whole list of items that are now permanently tax free. You’re talking about generators, life preservers, batteries, flashlights, anything that deals with hurricane preparedness and what you’ll need to stay prepared in the response and recovery, those are now permanently tax free for the entire year.”
What does the weather look like for the future?
Schwisow said, “What a crazy month we’ve had. We saw hurricane Erin come through and kind of meander. And you’re seeing that as a trend this year. You see these storms becoming disorganized and just trying to figure out, but once they get into that area that that is conductive of intensifying these storms, they blow up quickly. Last week, we’re watching that storm very, very closely and on a daily basis, it was increasing, 70%, 80%, 90% and we’re like, okay, let’s keep an eye on this. And then, all sudden, you wake up on Sunday morning, it’s a found an area that was not very, very good for improvement, and it died out pretty quickly. But we in the heart of hurricane season, so we continue to look at that Atlantic hurricane season, but here towards the end of the month, going in October, we need to start keeping an eye on the Gulf development and then that Southern Caribbean, Yucatan peninsula area, you’ll start to see some storms firing up in that area. We have eyes on the tropics, and we are pushing that information out. We got bombarded with a lot of messages due to just very long term tracks that were coming right over the Keys. I just want to caution people, when you start looking at storms that are two weeks out and you’re looking at the spaghetti models and they’re all the way across the Atlantic, those are very, very long term models, and they change every six hours. So if you want the most updated information when there is a storm out there, I’m getting information from the National Weather Service, and we are pushing that and that detailed information out on our website and on our Facebook page. It’s very detailed. I’ll let you know what we’re looking at, and then the percentages of those storms and how soon they could fire up.”
With the water temperatures rising, storms could be coming.
Schwisow said, “The water temperature has been warm enough for hurricane season since May. So you’ve got to have some good conditions and what really ate up this last storm is that it gets into an area of either dry air or wind shear. For these storms to develop, you’ve got to have that warm air, you’ve got to have some sort of rotation on that storm. But you also have to have a moist upper atmosphere with low wind shear. Once you have all those factors, that storm is really going to fire up. But if you remove one of those elements, kind of like how a fire starts, those storms struggle to develop.”
If a shelter is needed, how long does it take to get one ready?
Schwisow said, “We’re able to get those fired up and up and running fairly quickly. We’ll do some coordination calls with our school board, because our four shelters here in the county are all active schools, at Key West High School, Sugarloaf, Marathon and Coral Shores. But we already have all of the equipment and trailers ready to activate. So all we have to do is make the call. We’ll make a decision. We hook those trailers up, bring the supplies to the school, and within hours, we can have that shelter up and running.”
Can people help?
Schwisow said, “We are always looking for volunteers. The only way that the Keys work is when we work together. We have a couple different opportunities. If you visit our website, you can follow the portal to the Volunteer Monroe, and there’s a couple different opportunities. You can volunteer. Just put your name in a hat, and when we are activated, if you bring a skill set, hey, can you help distribute food and water? Do you want to volunteer for our shelters? And when you want to volunteer for our shelters, we’ll get you enrolled in our Monroe Emergency Reserve Corps, where we provide you about a day’s worth of training to show you how to activate the shelter and how to run the shelter and support our residents. So if you’re interested in volunteering with emergency management before an event or after an event, please visit our website. You can go on and register. We will take anybody who wants to volunteer with our services.”
If visitors are here during a storm, what kind of challenge does that present?
Schwisow said, “It poses a big challenge. I mean, our population size here in the Keys is just over about 80,000, but on any given day, or it can be a Fantasy Fest, or one of our other festivals that we have, I mean, there’s hundreds of thousands of visitors. But when it comes down to an emergency, we see that emergency or hurricane coming, we have a tiered evacuation plan. We’re going to get the tourists out. We partner with the TDC very, very closely so that we can figure out, hey, can we push messaging to the TDC also, while using our public information officer so that we can get the message out to our parks, to our hotels, to our visitors, that, hey, we’re going to go ahead and be closing up these hotels, those tourists, those visitors, those RV parks, you’ll be the first phase to get out of the county so that our residents can prepare what they need to do, and go ahead and get out of here too. But it is a challenge, and communication is the key. If you haven’t signed up for Alert Monroe as a Monroe County resident, please go on to our website. Sign up for Alert Monroe. You will get instant messaging if we need to push out an emergency. And with that, I can actually push out messages to cell phones, even if you’re not registered for Alert Monroe, that way, anybody within the geographical area of the Florida Keys will get a message regardless if they’re signed up or not. Residents of Monroe County, have a plan. Make sure you’re ready to execute that plan and be safe.”
For more information, click here: https://www.monroecountyem.com/