Cory Schwisow, the 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.
It was an incredibly busy weekend for emergency management in the Keys.
Schwisow said, “It was a very long weekend. It all started out on Friday. My flight to Key West was canceled, and I had to get as far south as I could, so as far south as they could get me was West Palm Beach, and I had to drive the rest of the way. So I think I got in about four o’clock in the morning, Saturday morning, and we were ready to open our warming shelter on Saturday evening. But it just shows you the coordination that we have here in the Keys. It was an absolutely amazing feat from the emergency management team and partnering with the sheriff’s office and the American Red Cross and along with parks and beaches, John Allen with his team quickly readied the community center up there in Plantation Key and we were able to open our doors at 7pm on Saturday night to provide some refuge from the weather that came in pretty quickly.”
Could the warming shelter be done again if it becomes necessary?
Schwisow said, “It’s been at least 16 years since we’ve seen some temperatures like we saw this weekend. I think the last time was about 2010 when we had some cold temperatures like that. But it really pushes the fact that we have to have plans in place. Plans are just that foundational guidance that we can flex and mold to make fit. And we had some initial plans that we wanted to do that didn’t work out, but we were able to quickly shift over to a location that worked well for us, and overall, a very successful operation over the weekend. Those winds on Saturday night were quite intense, and once those winds picked up, you saw that those temperatures plummet up in the upper Keys.”
Other parts of Florida were hit hard, too.
Schwisow said, “The northern portion of the state, they’ve had warming shelters open for the last several days, if not the last couple of weeks. So they’re a little bit more used to seeing some of these cold weathers. But these conferences are very important. Because I had 67 other directors that I had at my disposal. I said, hey, look, I know you guys are really good at this. What works in your community, what doesn’t work? And it really shows you the networking, the partnerships throughout the state. So it was a very beneficial conference. And you’ll learn a lot of great things, for example, an Airbnb program. We have a great program, partnering with the TDC. And the TDC has created a website specifically for emergency management and emergency workers, where, if we need to put residents, or have residents look for availability for displaced homes, they can go with the TDC. They can look at a website and find available units that they can have temporary shelter until FEMA or the American Red Cross finds them something a little bit long term. But airbnb.org, has a very similar program, where Airbnb covers the entire cost of a family that is displaced, so they can find a little bit more long term temporary shelter. So some great programs that came out of this conference. And then we were able to meet with the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, and tell us a little bit about the way forward and where are we looking at with FEMA? We should be seeing some FEMA review council reports coming out soon. So really, no cat was let out of the bag, but we’re eagerly awaiting what will FEMA look like on the way forward? What does funding look like? So we’re kind of sitting on the edge of our seat, seeing what’s what’s going to happen with that.”
Could there be changes coming from FEMA in time for the hurricane season?
Schwisow said, “There’s been no timeline set, and they have been very tight lipped with a lot of what’s going to be moving forward. But some of the things that have us worried is there’s been a lot of talk about sustainability with federal funding, where for a long time you could use federal funding grants for example, salaries, or pieces of equipment that we continuously use every single year. Well, some of the word that we’ve been getting out is the federal government wants local governments to take more ownership of that funding responsibility. So some of the talk is that putting three year timelines on projects or salaries, if you use a specific funding source for one thing for three consecutive years, they’re going to push that ownership over to local governments, so that could have a huge impact to a lot of the the local governments throughout the state of Florida, because a lot of Emergency Management departments rely on that federal funding for augmentation of salaries in their inner departments, or specific programs that they use for disaster response. So we’re really looking forward to seeing what FEMA has decided on that, and we’re hoping for the best here in Monroe County. That property tax issue has been in the front lines for quite some time. So it’s really going to make local governments work really creative, or try to work more efficiently. So the future is a little bit unknown for the financial aspect of not only just emergency management for our local government, not just Monroe County, but the entire state of Florida.”
Emergency management is getting ready to secure a contract for general transportation.
Schwisow said, “We’ll have a multi year contract with a commercial bus service that will supply up to 10 busses for us, for our general population evacuation. It’s a contract that we haven’t had in place for over a decade. So excited to kind of shore up some of our gaps that we’ve had over the last several years, and we’re looking good for the upcoming season. Not just for general population evacuation, but also to evacuate our general population’s pets, our special needs population, and any of our special needs clients that have pets. So we have a really good plan. And then not just for hurricanes, but if we have any type of disaster where we need to expeditiously move our populations, we can call on this service, so really excited where we’re going.”