A "must read" for Tampa-St. Pete folks

[MomH]

Tried to condense this some but it really should be read by anyone living in Tampa/St. Pete or anyone who has family or friends in that area.

It is From Links We Mentioned on http://www.tbo.com
More information at same place including flooding map and slosh models.


[From Links We Mentioned at http:// http://www.tbo.com]
[Excerpts]
We're Not Ready: Peril In Pinellas

By NEIL JOHNSON njohnson@tampatrib.com
Published: Oct 2, 2005
CLEARWATER - Residents on Pinellas County's skinny slice of land have few places to hide and few ways to escape from a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane.
Trapped between the Gulf of Mexico and Tampa Bay, half of Pinellas County will vanish under water if a worst-case hurricane plows into Tampa Bay. Destruction, especially of low areas and the necklace of barrier islands, will rival Hurricane Katrina's savaging of the Mississippi coast. …

There are more than 610,000 people in evacuation zones and in mobile homes and only 71,000 designated shelter spaces. Emergency Management Director Gary Vickers figures he can jam 7,000 more people into the shelters, but that still leaves more than a half-million to find shelter….

There are few roads to safety. If evacuees don't leave early enough, they will run out of time as highways clog with people fleeing surrounding counties. Mandatory evacuation orders will come only 24 to 48 hours before the storm hits, aggravating the time crunch.
The storm surge will engulf about 140 square miles, submerging low-lying areas in 20 feet of water. Areas flooded by 5 feet or more will be devastated. "It would probably destroy most buildings," Vickers said.
The flood will turn St. Petersburg into an island. Another area, running from Dunedin south through Clearwater and Belleair, also will remain above water. The rest of the county -- a strip across the central portion and most of Tarpon Springs -- will be awash.

Bridges over Tampa Bay will close when winds top 40 mph, cutting off the main evacuation routes hours before the eye of the storm hits.
Early Orders To Get Out
Pinellas officials plan to order an evacuation six hours before orders are issued in neighboring counties to give Pinellas evacuees a chance to get through Pasco or Hillsborough counties. …

About 8,400 people took refuge in public shelters during Hurricane Charley last year, leaving planners to guess at how many stayed in place despite warnings. They hope Katrina has changed their minds.
"People who don't evacuate will likely end up dead," Vickers said.

Further complicating Pinellas' plight is the makeup of its population.
Compared to other counties in the Tampa Bay area, Pinellas has more people to evacuate, more patients to move out of hospitals and nursing homes, more households without cars and more residents 65 and over.
As people are fleeing, ambulances and 230 school and county buses will attempt to evacuate nearly 6,000 patients from six hospitals and 35 nursing homes in danger of flooding. That will take as long as 24 hours.
Buses and ambulances will be waiting at the low-lying nursing homes and hospitals the minute an evacuation order becomes effective. Those facilities will know in advance that an order is coming. Shelters designated for people with special needs, who require nurses to care for wounds, IVs or dialysis, have 4,446 spaces. Pinellas has three special-needs shelters this year instead of the 11 designated last year. It was difficult to find medical staff for so many shelters, Vickers said.
The Aftermath
After the Gulf and Bay return to their shores, which will take 12 to 24 hours, the most difficult part of the recovery begins.
Many evacuees will have lost their homes. … County parks will probably become sites for tents or trailers brought in by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "We'll have to look at every available piece of land," Vickers said. …

In the first days after the storm, however, Pinellas may be isolated, with the causeways and bridges that connect it to the rest of the world washed out. Land routes from the north may be damaged.
"U.S. 19 has a lot of low spots and there could be lots of destruction. Bringing supplies in will be a significant challenge for Pinellas County," said Betti Johnson, principal planner for the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council's emergency management program.
The dense development of Pinellas limits options for airlifting supplies. …


Excerpts from
We're Not Ready: The Worst-Case Scenario
[found on Links We Mentioned at http://www.tbo.com]
By GRETCHEN PARKER, BAIRD HELGESON and NEIL JOHNSON The Tampa Tribune
Published: Oct 2, 2005

TAMPA - The worst-case scenario for the Tampa Bay area is a hurricane with winds of more than 155 mph that pushes 20 feet of water or more into much of Pinellas County and into downtown Tampa. Unlike the flooding that struck New Orleans, a hurricane's storm surge is a violent, savage force, like a bulldozer blade that is two houses tall and pulverizes anything in its path.
Waves up to 10 feet high will batter what remains above the surface.
The Gulf of Mexico would surge over Pinellas, slicing the county into two islands of high ground. Barrier islands would disappear under the Gulf waters.
Swirling wind would shove water into Tampa Bay, smashing it against the shore. MacDill Air Force Base and Davis Islands would be covered. At the north end of the Bay, up to 28 feet of water would invade downtown Tampa and force its way up the overflowing Hillsborough River.
Leading up to this furious and chaotic 12 to 24 hours would be an attempted exodus.
Evacuation
"Read my lips. Evacuate early," said Larry Gispert, head of Hillsborough County's emergency managers, after an Emergency Operations Center news conference.
But minutes earlier, Gispert had acknowledged the Tampa region likely wouldn't get mandatory evacuation orders more than 24 hours before the hurricane hits land.
That's because by the time a Gulf storm is forecast to strike here, it will be fully formed and breathing on our necks.
Hurricanes that threaten the Tampa Bay area typically make their way into the Gulf of Mexico between Cuba and the Yucatán, close enough to be only a day or two from Florida's west coast. In August 2004, when Hurricane Charley drew a bead on Tampa, county and municipal officials ordered an evacuation just 24 hours before the storm crashed into Southwest Florida.
Hillsborough County's plan offers no guarantee that a million people -- including Pinellas County's evacuees -- would be able to get out of harm's way using highways and interstates. Traffic experts have long said it would take four days to pull off such an exodus, because counties to the south would flee at the same time.
That's the longest evacuation time of any area on the coastal United States, according to a 2000 study by the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council.
It's further complicated by Pinellas County's limited escape routes. Emergency officials plan to order mandatory evacuations there six hours before the orders are given in neighboring Pasco and Hillsborough counties. …

The governor can order the state Department of Transportation to dust off a largely untested plan to turn Interstate 4 into a one-way, eastbound interstate. Reversing the lanes is a slow and complex undertaking that has only been tried during an exercise in 2003 that wasn't a full test.
"We're not really sure what it would look like," Gee said. "Plans are great, but sometimes unless you go out there, you don't see the holes." …
It would take a hundred officers -- troopers and National Guardsmen -- to make it happen.
Desperate For A Ride
Emergency planners in Hillsborough and Pinellas have no way of keeping track of the people most likely to be trapped -- the oldest, sickest and poorest residents.
Thirty-nine nursing homes and 10 hospitals in the two counties lie in evacuation zones. They have 7,734 beds. Hillsborough County requires each nursing home and hospital to submit a plan for how it will get its patients to safety. But the plans are untested and not enforced by the county. …
For its other sick residents, the county depends on individuals and home health agencies to preregister every year its "special needs" patients -- those on constant oxygen, kidney dialysis or IVs -- who don't live in nursing homes.
The roster was purged last year after Hurricane Charley, when county workers hurriedly tried to call each person on the list and found that 800 to 900 of them had died. …

There are about 2,000 on this year's list. Emergency planner Pete Dabrowski, whose duties include coordinating special-needs shelters, estimates at least 5,000 qualify. …

As for the rest of the hurricane needy -- those without cars or those who perhaps don't speak English -- emergency planners say they have no way to track them. The 2000 census showed 14,000 households in Hillsborough evacuation zones don't have vehicles.
Emergency planners routinely hold hurricane preparation forums in low-income neighborhoods and hosted a half-dozen just last month. … The most well-attended session, in Plant City, drew 80 people. …

In an effort to send public transportation their way, emergency planners have designed eight HARTline routes in the urban centers and a dozen bus routes through the south county communities of Gibsonton, Ruskin, Wimauma, Apollo Beach and Riverview.
…the planners have held a flurry of meetings with representatives from county schools, HARTline, ambulance companies and churches to rework plans for transporting residents.
Planners have been pushing religious leaders to commit to ferrying the infirm in their congregations to shelters.
Shelters
The county lacks enough shelter spaces for its sickest residents.
There are 2,500 beds for special-needs patients; planners bank on only a quarter of the 5,000 who likely qualify showing up. During Charley, only 600 stayed in special-needs shelters, but planners acknowledge the post-Katrina effect likely will bring in more. …
During Charley, the shelters were understaffed, prompting the health department to seek more nurses. There still wouldn't be enough staff to run the shelters in a catastrophic hurricane that would keep them open longer than three days.

As for healthy evacuees, there are not enough spaces for them, either.
There are 405,000 people in the county's evacuation zones, according to the Census Bureau's community survey in 2004. But Hillsborough shelters, which must be hurricane-hardened to be run by American Red Cross workers, have space for only 65,000. If necessary, Gispert figures staff members can "sardine" in 130,000 people -- double the allotted amount. "We can jam them in," he said. Gispert said traditional disaster planning anticipates only a quarter of evacuees showing up for shelter.

There is no plan for county sheriff's deputies or Tampa police to patrol those crowded into overflow shelters -- the "shelters of last resort" -- including movie theaters, malls and college campuses, authorities said. Those would be the New Orleans Superdomes of our region, the last-minute gathering places for stranded drivers and others who have nowhere to go. Those shelters could be without law enforcement protection at least until the wind drops. …
THE AFTERMATH
Communication
Lack of communication was a serious matter for last year's four hurricanes in Florida and this year's storms in the Gulf Coast. Residents were unable to call for help; police, firefighters, paramedics, sheriff's deputies and government officials were unable to contact one another. After a Category 5 storm, sheriff's officials are imagining a silent wasteland so devoid of communication they might have to fly bright balloons over key checkpoints and rendezvous areas until radio and cell phone reception is restored.

They have plans to erect temporary communication towers, but it could take days to restore even minimal communication. Regular cell phone customers should expect to be without phone service for days or weeks.
Since Charley, the county has bought nearly 70 satellite phones, which can provide the only links to the outside world in major storms. …
Security
Search, rescue and recovery operations by county and city workers will be limited after the storm, officials said. That's because the sheriff's office has limited equipment -- one Humvee capable of running in deep water, along with a few airboats and one deep-water boat -- …
Tampa Fire Rescue workers will answer as many calls from city and county dispatch centers as possible, Fire Chief Dennis Jones said. The city has a fleet of boats and personal watercraft and preassigned rescue teams made up of fire engines, police, Tampa Electric Co. trucks, bulldozers, ambulances and chain saw operators.
Meanwhile, rescue teams organized by the state will also be looking for survivors.
Supplies such as water, ice and food will be stationed away from the storm's path and moved to staging areas such as the Florida State Fairgrounds. From there, supplies will go to 16 distribution sites and 16 alternate sites throughout the county. Emergency workers have detailed plans for moving the supplies, but they are still drawing up the maps that would be crucial to show each location.
Emergency planners preach a 72-hour mantra: Be ready to be on your own for at least three days. …
Health Care
Injured hurricane victims would have to find their own way to emergency medical facilities in the hours after the storm, local officials said.
Four Hillsborough County hospitals -- three with emergency rooms -- are in evacuation zones. Tampa General Hospital, although in an evacuation zone, plans to abandon lower floors instead of evacuating. The 877-bed hospital is the region's only trauma center that cares for the most critically ill patients.
That leaves seven other medical facilities with emergency rooms … How quickly patients can get to them depends on how quickly roads can be cleared.
Hillsborough County has the ability to create a makeshift tent hospital at the state fairgrounds.
Housing
A major hurricane could leave 405,000 Tampa Bay area residents without a home, at least temporarily. Of those, more than 100,000 residents will need help finding a place to live for the long run. The county's emergency plan says little about short-term housing solutions because officials expect federal agencies [FEMA] to lead the effort. …
FEMA expects homeless hurricane victims to spend the first three weeks in shelters, in hotels, or with family and friends. …FEMA envisions using fairgrounds, state parks and even airport land as sites for mobile home parks for displaced residents …
Tampa Bay area storm victims could be forced to endure long waits for FEMA mobile homes, extending their stay in shelters never designed to become long-term housing. The nation's mobile home industry can build about 135,000 units a year.
Lining Up Aid
Gispert argues that no community is ever fully capable of handling a Katrina-like monster. His strategy is to round up the local resources, dole them out and then appeal to state and federal government for help. "If we can't handle it, Governor Jeb Bush will help us." he said. "He'll come a-runnin' " with all his troops. If he can't handle it, then we go to Washington."
Each county is in charge of directing local relief efforts and telling state agencies what supplies, manpower and equipment they need and where.

But Katrina exposed a question that until now was unimaginable:
"What if local employees are so thoroughly overwhelmed that they don't know what they need or where it should go?" …
Still, several planners and administrators interviewed acknowledge more specific plans need to be made. …
"Katrina has shown us where we've got errors we've got to work on," …

The good news is that Hillsborough County -- and Florida -- have practiced. Last year's storms left our communities better prepared than many to deal with a catastrophe.
But "we need to ramp it up," Dabrowski said of the county's Category 3 planning.
"We need to go further than that. It's going to take a little bit of time.

Very scary.
MomH

[USCG_Hurricane_Watcher]

Geez...When I was stationed there at Bayboro, I used to live on St. Pete Beach...scary stuff.

[Tampa Bay Hurricane]

BUMP

Tampa Bay is at highest risk due to cold fronts steering storms into
the West Coast in October.