Shannon Weiner, Director of Emergency Management for Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
How is emergency management looking in terms of weather?
Weiner said, “There are two areas of potential formation out there in the Atlantic Ocean. The first one is very, very far east off the coast of Africa, but it looks like a tropical depression will form later this week. So that’s something we have time to keep an eye on, but it’s something we definitely want to keep an eye on. The second area is in the central Atlantic ocean, a little bit closer near the Lesser Antilles and we do expect some formation to occur there, but as it continues to move westward, it’s going to run in some unfavorable conditions. So we’re hoping that it will slow down and break up. But again, it’s Mother Nature. You can never tell with her, and you got to keep your eye out. So we’ll continue to monitor that one as well.”
September is no time to leave our guard down.
Weiner confirmed, “August and September are the peak of hurricane season. So you do, you kind of go through, oh, it’s June and July, and we’ve been okay, but it is not time to let your guard down. You still have time if you do not have your hurricane supply kit ready and preparations to be able to shelter in place, at home if you need to for a weaker storm, or evacuate out of the county for a stronger storm, we want to encourage you to go out and stock up on food and water and medicines and supplies for your pet, and make sure that you have things you need to secure your home if you need to stay and weather a storm or evacuate.”
September 23 is the ribbon cutting for the Emergency Operations Center.
Weiner said, “We are very excited here at the county for that day to arrive. It has been a long time coming. The new Emergency Operations Center was actually funded and designed with multiple grants, including a FEMA grant, a Florida Department of Transportation grant and a Florida Division of Emergency Management grant. There were over $30,000 in all of that grant money to help build this building. The result was a 24,000 plus square foot building designed to sustain wind speeds of 220 mile per miles per hour wind. It is a definitely a hardened, like we say, facility. It stands more than 20 feet in the air, because we know how vulnerable the county is to storm surge and it is built to operate up to a minimum of 72 hours, completely off the grid. It has a 5,940 gallon potable water tank, and it has three, 2,500 gallon sewer storage tanks. There are two 500 kilowatt generators, and there is connection for a third mobile generator, if we were to ever need it. But I would hope not. It would have to be a very, very, very bad day to lose two generators that size. The exterior windows are two inches thick, and the glass and all the exterior doors on the ground level are more than one and a quarter inches thick, and there are over 75,000 linear feet of electrical conduit and 250,000 feet of wire. It is definitely a substantial building. We’re very proud to have our partners at the sheriff’s office. We have the 911 dispatch center. They are operating out of there currently. They have been operating out of there for a few weeks now, and everything seems to be going very well, so we’re super excited about that. We will have Fire Rescue administration in the building as well. We are currently in the process of moving from our offices on 63rd Street. So it’s been a little bit hectic, but we’re almost there, and we’re very excited to be able to use that building, both in blue skies for the daily operations of those three county departments, but also for hosting training and exercises and meetings for our EOC partners as well. We’re definitely going to put it to use.”
Just having a centralized location will be such an advantage.
Weiner said, “On September 10, we’re going to bring all of those EOC partners, all of our county partners and state and local partners that work in the EOC, for example, the school boards, the Department of Health, of course, law enforcement, fire rescue from our municipalities as well as the county, our military partners, our Coast Guard partners, our Public Works people, our roads and bridges people for the county, we are going to bring all of those people in and more that I didn’t mention that work hard to keep the county running during an emergency and recover afterwards. We’re going to bring them in on September 10, and we are going to give them what we call a tabletop exercise. We’re going to give them a scenario that’s going to affect all the Keys, and we are going to test all of that new equipment in the building before that ribbon cutting, because we really want to be able to have that building be functional and good to go by that September 23 date, so that if we have a storm after that time, we can feel secure about using that new facility. I want to give a really big thank you to the Monroe County Public Works team here in Marathon. They’ve been absolutely phenomenal from getting the building ready, building tables and chairs and making sure that everything is hooked up and working, and helping us move our offices across the street, from one side of the street to the next, and then the county IT guys, the Information Technology team. They’ve been amazing as well. They’ve worked really hard to make sure that all that equipment is working and functional, and testing it, and finding little bugs in the system and working through them, and making sure that all the audio visual, all the technology is working in the building as well as the security systems in addition. So it’s really been a true team effort in partnership with Ajax, who did the construction, build itself and manage that process. I can’t say enough about the time that our county employees have really put in over the summer here to make sure this building is stood up and ready to go by the end of September.”
Alert Monroe is still available at the county’s website.
Weiner said, “If you have not put together your hurricane preparedness plan, I would encourage you to take advantage of the beautiful day and go ahead and make that happen.”
For more information, click here: https://www.monroecounty-fl.gov/