Hurricane Ian is forecast
to be a major hurricane,
with Tropical storm force winds
extending out 90 miles and hurricane
force winds extending out 30 miles.
You can see from the windfield map
that the significant portion of
the state of Florida is impacted.
If this storm continues
to shift more to the east,
we will feel those more significant winds.
It's a lot of uncertainty to know
exactly where it's going to be,
so it's important that we prepare
for the worst at this point in time.
We have been planning for a category
three storm to potentially hit us.
You can see from the storm
surge map that we have here,
these are the areas of the
county that we expect there to be
significant storm surge inundation.
This can be life threatening.
The areas that we would look
to evacuate would be level A.
Level B and level C.
I need everyone. Everyone.
Businesses, individuals.
To check their evacuation zone,
we updated our zones this year in 2022.
So don't assume because you might have
been outside of his own last year,
your zone hasn't changed.
It changed for a significant
number of people in the county.
We will post on our website,
storm.pinellascounty.org,
our risk viewer, that shows this map
so people can look at this and they
can understand what type of impacts
they could see in their neighborhoods.
This is going to be a lot more than what
people saw for Hurricane Ada a few years ago.
So for those of you that lived on the
barrier islands and had that flooding,
you can expect something
more significant with that.
The other challenge well,
many challenges with this storm.
Is we are expecting 10 to 15 inches of rain.
Our ground is already saturated.
Our public works folks have been actively
working to pump down Lake Taylor Lake
Seminole pumping in Brooker Creek.
But we do anticipate there will be
significant flooding in relation
to this rainfall.
The bad piece of news we got this morning
is that this storm is trending to slow down.
Which means it potentially could
sit on top of us for 47 hours.
That's a lot of rain.
And it's not going to be able
to drain out quickly.
If you live in an area that
is prone to flooding.
I need you to protect your home.
Raise your belongings.
And be prepared.
If you live in one of
these storm surge areas,
you need to prepare to evacuate.
This is no joke.
This is life threatening storm surge.
We have been actively working
with homeless outreach teams to
reach our vulnerable populations,
to provide them with awareness and to
let them know what services are available.
We are actively reaching out to
our special needs registrants,
which is over 4000 people in our county.
To confirm.
That they want to evacuate and
we'll begin transporting some of
them this evening and continue
with that evacuation tomorrow.
We are actively working with our
hospitals and our long term care
facilities in the areas of inundation.
We have 99 facilities that are at risk.
We ask that our long term care facilities.
Begin their evacuations today.
We're already seeing some
of our hospitals do that.
We will be opening general population
shelters tonight at 6:00 PM.
At Ross Norton Community Center
in Clearwater.
Leoman Exchange Community
Center in Saint Petersburg.
And Largo High School in Largo as a
general population and pet friendly site.
You can find the addresses for
these shelters on our website at
storm.pinellascounty.org.
We will be opening additional
shelters tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM.
If you can stay with friends or family,
we encourage you to do so.
If you plan to leave the county,
I encourage you to do that early.
Other counties are starting to order
evacuations and you will see that
what is normally a one hour drive to
Orlando may become a four hour or a
10 hour drive as traffic builds up.
We will be running transportation
through psta buses.
They run from 5:00 AM to midnight.
The County Information Center is
available if you have questions or you
need to talk to someone. That number is
727-464-4333. We also provide live
chat and you can access that through
our pinellascounty.org website.
We encourage you to go to
thestorm.pinellascounty.org
site to look at our risk viewer.
You can look up your evacuation zone.
It will link you to the evacuation
centers that will be opening
so you can find the addresses.
We also encourage you to sign
up for alert Pinellas.
Alert Pinellas will send we send out
notifications directly to your cell phones,
your emails.
We'll let you know when we're
calling evacuations.
We'll let you know when shelters open.
We'll be messaging through that and
ready Pinellas and social media and
all of our media outlet partners for
safety information and information for
where you can go if you need assistance.
Today everyone should be topping off their
gas tanks getting their non perishable foods.
Water, medications and items ready whether
you're evacuating or sheltering in place.
Your plans should include all members
of your family, including pets.
I ask each and everyone of you
to lookout for your neighbors,
exchange phone numbers,
work together for supplies.
Look out for the elderly and
vulnerable your friends and neighbors,
and check on them to make sure
they have what they need.
If possible, invite them into your home.
This is going to be a scary event.
So if you're together with friends or family,
it just makes it that much better for you.
If you are outside of one of
our evacuation zones and you
can invite someone into your
home to shelter with you,
we ask that you do that.
Reach out to your coworkers,
your neighbors, your friends.
Again, you can find out more
information on what to have in your kit,
how to repair your home,
information on generator safety,
how to clean up after flooding,
what to do if you have damages to your home.
You can access all the
information on our website,
throughstorm.pinellascounty.org.
We also have information in our ready
Pinellas app and once you've opened
up one of those tabs in the app,
it will save that information to your phone.
So if the Internet goes down,
you'll still have the information.
In the palm of your hand.
We encourage everybody, as I said,
who may be leaving the county or have an
alternate place to go to start so today.
We ask that the tourists that
have been here and enjoyed our
beautiful beaches and beautiful
weather to start heading home.
We want you to have fond memories
of Pinellas County and we invite
you to come back when this is over.
We want to stress that if you live
in a mobile or a manufactured home,
regardless of where it is in the county.
You will need to evacuate.
These winds are going to affect
the entire county.