St. Pete Beach Prepares for Hurricane Season
By Elizabeth Carr
In October of 1921, a hurricane hit St. Petersburg and destroyed that year's crop of oranges. Winds reached 100 miles per hour, and 6.48 inches of rain fell in the three-day storm. Nearly 11 feet of water left boats washed up on main roads. Ninety people died during the storm, and damage totaled $8 million dollars today's dollars. The hurricane wiped out the Pass-A-Grille and Seminole bridges, which were later rebuilt. Power lines and telephone lines were downed. It was the worst hurricane the area had seen since 1848.
But in the 1950s, people wanted to stay behind during a hurricane and party.
Local real estate agent and unofficial historian Frank Hurley remembers when hurricanes were a celebrated event. A resident of St. Pete Beach for nearly 60 years, he recalls the "hurricane parties" popular in the '50s. Food, booze and buckling down to ride out the storm together were part of the event. Now, the parties are no longer fashionable.
These days when a warning is issued, residents of the beaches listen.
"We have been very lucky—maybe the guy upstairs smiles down on us," said Hurley. But according to predictions made at the National Hurricane Conference 2004 in Orlando, eight of 14 named storms will become hurricanes-three of which will be considered major. And St. Pete Beach is vulnerable.
Vulnerable also are the people who have to stay behind to secure the city during the hurricane. They are the people who to stay-not to party or because they want to-because it's their job.
Hurricane season started June 1 and lasts through Nov. 30. So St. Pete Beach has been gearing up. So has Fred Golliner, one of the men who would stay behind while everyone else evacuates.
Golliner, the fire chief of St. Pete Beach, constantly watches the Weather Channel. He gets the tidal flow charts from the Coast Guard and watches the local weather broadcasts every day. Golliner and his staff host hurricane forums for the public and try to alleviate fears of school children by talking to them about what a hurricane is. There are games, puzzles and coloring books. But that's the easy part of his job. The tough part comes when a storm is on the way.
Even if it's a storm warning, St. Pete Beach must evacuate. A Level One evacuation area, beach residents are the first to leave in Pinellas County. The only people on the beach who don't leave are the workers who are part of the emergency response system. Police officers, firefighters and members of the Pinellas Emergency Operations Center (EOC) all go to work when everyone else is trying to find higher ground.
"As soon as a warning is issued, all personnel are required to report to work," said Golliner. The staff puts up shutters to barricade the windows and move equipment into storage. After the workers make sure their own families are safe, they return to work: to the possible flooding, to the winds that can reach up to 155 mph, to the uncertainty of what a storm will bring.
Winds of that speed can flatten houses, overturn cars and blow out bridges. But Golliner is undaunted. He's ready and willing to stay, even though in his 25 years with the fire department he has never experienced a hurricane.
His job includes mobilizing the special needs transportation system. Using Pinellas County buses, those people who are physically unable to drive themselves to a shelter or able to evacuate are picked up. Once the evacuation starts, the police and fire departments go about cleaning up debris, securing buildings, securing water and power facilities and patrolling neighborhoods to make sure everyone is out or that residents at least have a plan of where they will go.
That's the biggest problem, said Gene Ritter, director of Emergency Services for the Tampa Bay area Red Cross. Residents know when an evacuation is ordered they must get out-but don't have a set plan of where exactly they will go. Ritter said he hopes shelters are a last resort for people.
"A lot of people gauge their reason to leave on whether it's a big or small storm," said Ritter. But when they do leave and come back, St. Pete Beach and the officials who stayed behind will be ready.
Out of all the preparation for hurricane season came one major change in how St. Pete Beach deals with re-entry after the storm has passed. After the cleanup, St. Pete Beach is opened back up for people to return to their homes. But only residents and business owners are allowed back. So instead of having to check driver's licenses or credit card bills or something else that proves a resident must be in the area, the fire department operations manager came up with an alternative: rearview mirror hangers.
The hangers look like handicapped tags that dangle off a rearview mirror, only these hangers are color-coded according to voting districts. Instead of stopping at checkpoints coming back into St. Pete Beach after the storm has subsided, residents with the hangers are waved right through. The hangers cost a one-time fee of $1 and are available for residents and business owners. This way only those people who absolutely need to be in St. Pete Beach are let back in, cutting down on curious folks eager to see the damage done by the storm.
So far, the hangers have not yet been used in a hurricane.
That's a good thing, according to Gary Vickers, director of Pinellas County Department of Emergency Management. The hanger program "seems to be a good program for that municipality," said Vickers. But he said that if such a program were to be used on the mainland, it would be virtually unmanageable and a whole staff would have to be hired just to maintain the hanger database. With a defined area and population, though, the city of St. Pete Beach thinks the hanger program is a perfect fit.
Big or small, St. Pete Beach has its emergency plans in place and the staff to implement them.
The technological advances that were not yet thought of the last time a major hurricane hit St. Pete Beach give the community the advantage of not re-living the 1921 storm that quickly turned paradise into a living nightmare.
Residents and city workers are hoping there will not be a repeat performance of that storm this year. But just in case, Fred Golliner and his fire staff will continue to work hard at "turning paradise back into paradise."
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Click here to view a PDF of this article, designed by Alastair Knapper (600 KB).
For tips on how you can prepare for a hurricane see the 2004 Hurricane Guide.
Hurricane Strength Categories:
The Saffir-Simpson scale is used to rate the strength of hurricanes:
• Category 1-Winds of 74 to 95 mph, damage minimal
• Category 2-Winds of 96 to 110 mph, damage moderate
• Category 3-Winds of 111 to 130 mph, damage major
• Category 4-Winds of 131 to 155 mph, damage severe
• Category 5-Winds above 155 mph, damage catastrophic
Information from the 2004 Hurricane Guide and the National Weather Service.
Additional information about the 1921 hurricane came from "Voices of America, St. Petersburg: An Oral History" by Scott Taylor Hartzell and "St. Petersburg and the Florida Dream, 1888-1950" by Raymond Arsenault.
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