September 29 — In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, Key West city employees and partners are hard at work.
Key West Mayor Teri Johnston joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about how the city is faring.
Talks began on Friday about preparedness, including county and other municipal operations.
Contracts were put in place for debris removal and a State of Emergency was declared.
Johnston said, “We have been meeting routinely. We have been working with the Coast Guard and the Navy and the county and certainly our fire and police and every single department here in the city of Key West. I couldn’t be prouder of our organization and how well we worked together. We’re a well-oiled team that knows how to handle these situations. We just go into a mode where everybody does their job. Everybody communicates well and things really worked very, very smoothly during this weather event.”
There were a number of sessions learned from Irma.
Johnston said, “One of the things that certainly came to light very quickly was when the Coast Guard closed down our port at 10 o’clock on Monday, we have a high number of live-aboards out there on the hook by Wisteria Island, in the mooring fields. Based on the affordable housing crisis, we have a number of people that have moved to boats for living conditions. You realize very quickly that when the Coast Guard closes down the port, there basically no help there for our live-aboards. So we worked very diligently with the county in order to get the high school opened up as a general population shelter so that we could get these live-aboards off the water and onto land, which is safe. That was one of the situations that I think that probably we’ll react to a little quicker because with the affordability crisis, all we’re going to see is more and more people out there on boats, that are living on their boats full time.”
The storm surge was particularly intense during Hurricane Ian in the Keys.
Johnston said, “I think people were surprised that this actually resulted in a storm surge that was on par with Wilma and Hurricane Irma. We have a lot of low lying areas in they city of Key West. Many of those homes were flooded on the first floor. We certainly learned some lessons from that. All in all, I think everybody reacted incredibly.”
Yesterday when the day began, more than 10,000 residents were without power. By the end of the day, that was down to 1,000 thanks to Keys Energy.
Johnston said, “Those crews were just incredible. I know we’ve got crews out right now on the ground and we’ve got drones up in the air to assess our damage. We are in the repair road as of right now for the city of Key West.”
At least 50 homes are now uninhabitable with another 93 that are questionable.
Johnston said, “That’s one percent of our housing stock. We are in the middle, as everyone knows, in an affordable housing crisis, so to take one percent of our housing stock out of availability is a very critical situation for the city of Key West.”
Winds were clocked at more than 100 miles per hour during the storm.
The general housing shelter housed 118 people and kept them safe.
Johnston said, “We do expect some rain today, but we’ve got our damage assessment crews out right now. They’re on the ground. We’re here on clean up. We’ve got three outside agencies that are here to help us with clean up. We hope to have the city in much better shape.”
City Hall is closed today with just a skeleton crew to allow employees to do their own clean up. It will open up again tomorrow.
Johnston said, “It’s a day of repair, so let’s get out there and try and get back to as normal as we possibly can. Hurricanes, although they are devastating for everyone involved, they also bring out the best in people. That’s what we’re seeing right now. Neighbors helping neighbors. The federal government helping state government and this is going to be a whopper for the state of Florida. We are going to need all the federal assistance that we can get. It just brings to mind what an incredible community we live in. We will rebound. One of the opportunities that’s created every time you have a weather event is to build back stronger and we’re going to have the opportunity right now when we build these structures to rebuild them above base flood elevation and to higher wind speeds.”