State imposes new hurricane policy

County must count all residents in evacuation time estimates

BY ANN HENSON

Citizen Staff

The state wants all Florida Keys residents to be able to evacuate 24 hours before a hurricane is predicted to strike, contradicting the previous administration’s acceptance of a plan that took mobile home park residents out of the equation.

The state Department of Community Affairs (DCA) now adheres to its unwritten policy that everyone should be able to evacuate in 24 hours, and could withhold building permits if Monroe County cannot meet that time frame.

The Florida Keys has relied upon a phased evacuation since 2005. Mobile home park residents are asked to leave early, at the same time as tourists, removing them from the evacuation calculations for residents.  The DCA, which oversees development in the Keys, requires evacuation be possible for 100 percent of the people in the Keys at the time of the storm, said agency spokesman Jon Peck.

“It’s not written down in any official document, because it ought to be the common-sense policy. We won’t leave anyone behind,” he said.

DCA Secretary Tom Pelham, who Gov. Charlie Crist named to the post in December, endorses the policy, Peck said.

If full evacuation cannot be met within 24 hours, DCA can withhold some of unincorporated Monroe County’s 197 building permits issued each year.

The state now is running models to test the Keys’ evacuation ability, Peck added.

Former Secretary Thaddeus Cohen allowed the county more leeway after county officials in 2006 told him that only 75 percent of permanent residents typically evacuate and that mobile home residents should be required to leave before the county orders residents to evacuate. That scenario resulted in an evacuation time frame of 18.2 hours.

The new administration did not like juggling the numbers, Peck said.

“If the plan calls for less than everyone to evacuate and everyone decides to leave, then you have under-planned in a way that puts lives at risk, and that’s not the approach we are taking. Our approach is to plan for everyone to get out,” he said.

The policy shift took County Administrator Tom Willi by surprise, but he said he was confident the county could evacuate within a 24-hour period.

“To have conceptual discussions about moving everyone out — is that productive? We know that not everyone will leave, so let’s deal with reality,” he said.

The ability to meet the 24-hour mandated evacuation time frame is contained in the county’s annual work plan submitted to DCA, along with cleaning nearshore waters, providing affordable housing and protecting habitat for endangered species. The DCA secretary reviews the work plan and reports to the governor and Cabinet at the end of each year whether the county has or has not made progress in those areas.

Willi said the state cannot mandate that the county comply with its new view of hurricane evacuation.

“Just because there’s a state policy change doesn’t mean we have to follow suit,” he said. “We have a comprehensive plan amendment that spells out what our evacuation will be.”

Willi added that the state would have to ask the county to amend the state-approved comprehensive plan that guides development. “Then, it’s up to the County Commission to amend it or not,” he said.

The 18-hour evacuation estimate drew fierce criticism from environmentalists, who said county officials and Cohen were kowtowing to developers by creating the false impression that the Keys could handle more people living in — and evacuating from — the island chain.

Keys emergency managers as well as emergency managers at the state level were furious with the reduced evacuation time and said nothing had changed in their procedures.

About 20 years ago, the county informally adopted a phased evacuation that requires tourists and special needs residents to be out of the county 36 hours before a storm is expected to hit the Keys.

The county is divided into three regions, with the area likely to be hit evacuating first, about 24 hours before the storm is expected to hit. In 2004, Miller and Associates conducted a study and determined that the county could not be evacuated within the 24-hour time frame. County officials condemned the research as flawed.

DCA then suggested modifying the evacuation procedure to include mobile home residents be required to evacuate with the tourists. The county agreed, and came up just shy of the 24-hour deadline, at 23 hours and 38 minutes.

The county then suggested that not all houses would be occupied during the summer hurricane season and that only 75 percent of residents would evacuate.

County Commissioner George Neugent said the 24-hour evacuation policy may halt growth and stall affordable housing projects.

ahenson@keysnews.com