Kristen Livengood, Public Information Officer for Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys this morning to talk about what’s going on with Hurricane Milton.
As of right now, there are no evacuation orders in place.
Livengood said, “Right now there’s no evacuation orders in place. We want to make sure that people have their yards and properties secured by this evening, we’re expecting some of that bad weather to come through tonight, starting tonight, so you want to make sure that you bring in your outdoor furniture and secure any of your loose items. I know the city of Key West and waste management in the Lower Keys have already canceled service for tomorrow for trash service, so you’re going to want to make sure that your cans are secure and everything. I do update the Monroe County Joint Information Center website, which is, if you go to our Monroe County website, or Monroe County Emergency Management website, you’ll see a banner running across the top of the website. Just click on that and it will take you to our Joint Information Center. I work with the cities and utilities on that website, so it’s a one stop shop for most of the information that people are looking for. We also made our hotline live this morning, so if people want to call, the extension services are taking phone calls live and answering questions if people need them. So just a lot going on.”
Remember to check on your boat.
Livengood said, “Make sure their bilge pumps are working if they are leaving them in the water, make sure they’re secure if they’re pulling them out on a trailer, and to continue monitoring reliable sources and to have a plan in place. This is the midst of hurricane season right now, and we got some other things that we’re watching out there as well. We just send all of our good vibes, up to the middle of Florida, where they are about to get just pummeled again, which is so unfortunate for them”
What are we looking at in terms of storm surge?
Livengood said, “I am trying to make that comparative to what people would know is that it’s going to be about one to two feet above a king tide, a high king tide. So if somebody gets water in a king tide, or it gets close to their property in king tides, they need to obviously take some protective measures, just knowing that they should get some water with this event based on the way that the storm is going. So one to two feet above king tide levels.”
Tampa is going to get hit hard.
Livengood said, “One of the girls that usually works in my hotline, she works remotely out of out of St Pete, and she’s expected to get 12 foot of storm surge. So that’s absolutely devastating for her, her family there. I tried to talk them into coming down here, but they have evacuated to Pensacola. So just definitely something to be sending our all those good vibes up to that part of the state right now.”
What will the winds do down here?
Livengood said, “I guess our wind event for this should be Helene like what we saw for Helene a couple weeks ago. That’s what our wind should be like. So some higher sustained 35 mile per hour sustained and then some wind gusts up to 60 miles per hour. People need to be aware, especially if they’re in a high profile vehicle, when they’re driving over bridges and things like that, that it could be dangerous in those squalls.”
A tropical storm warning is still in effect.
Livengood said, “People can sign up for Alert Monroe if they go to the website. There’s a couple little stickers where they can sign up for it, that will give them the link to sign up for that. What’s nice about that, too, is that if you have a phone that’s registered in Monroe County, already, your number’s already on there, so you probably get our phone calls already.”
For more information, click here: https://monroecountyem.com/1324/Emergency-Management