Cory Schwisow, Director of Emergency Management for Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM yesterday morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
A microburst weather event happened in Tavernier on Sunday.
Schwisow said, “Around 3:30, 4 o’clock, we had a report of hail and winds up to about 70 miles an hour that went through the Harry Harris area, had some reports of some roof damage and some small structural damage, along with lots of downed limbs and trees throughout the park and throughout those neighboring areas. So we sent a team out, through the area, just to see if we can do a little bit deeper assessment to see if anybody had any unmet needs. But it just shows you how quickly we can go from a nice, sunny day on a Sunday afternoon to it can have those destructive winds happen that quickly. So we’ve always got to be prepared and watch the weather and have a plan to get to a safe place very quickly.”
The emergency re-entry placard program has some changes coming up.
Schwisow said, “We spent about $5,000 a year, printing these placards and distributing them out. And if we don’t use them, it’s a cost we eat. So if you look, we spent tens of thousands of dollars printing these placards out. And I’m like, there’s a better way of doing this. So we’re going to be opening up the applications this month. If you follow our web page and you follow the little cookie crumbs to the recovery tab, it’ll say reentry after an emergency. If you follow that, you can see pathways to our placard program, and it’ll take you to an application plate page. But also on that page is we have templates for your emergency action plan. And then also what kind of services can you provide the county? Can you house emergency workers? Do you have equipment that can help response and recovery operations? Do you have a business or a restaurant to help feed emergency workers? So we’re always looking for locals to help our local emergency management efforts. So definitely go on to the page. We’ll be opening it up here in the next week or so. But what we’re going to be doing, instead of issuing a hard placard, we’re going to be going and using a QR code style system, where you’ll be registered in a database, and we’ll issue that QR code that’s going to be registered to you, but once you scan that QR code with our database, it’ll deactivate the QR code so that that QR code can’t get redistributed. I think we have a good plan moving forward that we can save some money and work a little bit more efficiently.”
It’s still important to be diligent in keeping fires at bay.
Schwisow said, “You look at that fire up in the Everglades, that national fire in Big Cypress I mean, you’re up over 25,000 acres burned and take a look down US 1, you’re looking at the mangroves and foliage on the side of the roads. I mean, it’s brown, and it’s not going to take much to light up. And then, with some of our wind conditions that we’ve had, if we do have a wildfire, it’s going to spread very, very quickly. So we’ve just got to be proactive. If things need trimming, just get it out of the way. Let’s get that stuff knocked down, and then watch your open flames and stop flicking your cigarette butts out the window.”
Emergency Management is always watching for any activity that could affect us, especially from the Middle East.
Schwisow said, “There’s people here in this country, that don’t like us because of where we’re from, and what we do? We’re always going to be staying alert. We would network with our federal, state and local partners. So if anything were to happen, we plan for it. We exercise it. Just here in the next month, we are planning an anti terrorism exercise with the state that is going to address some of these concerns. So it’s not just hurricanes and storm and weather down here, we try to plan for as much as we possibly can.”
For more information, click here: https://monroecountyem.com/