pinellas storm officials act in your best interest
permalink | categories: beaches, business, county, economy, government, health, hotels, hurricanes, paying rent, pinellas, service, tourismby tommy @ 12:21 pm
On the afternoon of Aug. 18, Pinellas officials ordered mandatory evacuation of the county’s most flood-prone areas for 6am the next day. Tropical Storm Fay was heading our way.
Over at the TradeWinds Island Resorts in St. Pete Beach, visitors checked out and took off. They say they missed out on over $150,000 in canceled rooms and missed food and beverage sales.
The storm shifted and ended up making landfall south of Naples. Pinellas canceled the evacuation order at around 5:30am.
So now, hotel managers are saying that Pinellas “overreacted.”
“It was outrageous for the authorities to make the call prior to even being put on hurricane watch,” wrote Philippe Eversdijk, general manger of the Marriott Suites Clearwater Beach. “The decision … shows lack of respect for our area’s bread & butter: tourism.”
It sure is easy to whine about everything a month later. Pinellas County Commission Chairman Robert Stewart wants the hotels to man up and deal with it:
“This was an unavoidable development,” Stewart said. “We’re always going to err on the side of caution.”
Pinellas is Florida’s most dense county - they have more people per square mile than anywhere else in the state. The land is surrounded by water on three sides. Any storm is going to cause trouble, and a big storm will nearly flood the entire county. With that big of a responsibility, officials must act early.
If your business loses a couple of bucks to ensure that nobody gets hurt, then you gotta tough it out. You have another 330 days of the year to be profitable. Or, you can move your multi-million dollar resorts somewhere else, perhaps New Orleans.
I bet these guys piss & moan about the insurance bill, too.
Tags: business, county, evacuation, Florida, hotels, hurricane, insurance, pinellas, tourism, tropical storm, tropical storm fay, visitors
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September 11th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
easy solution - don’t make evacuations “mandatory”.
If you want to take the risk, by all means you should have thr ight to do so. If you wan’t to be stupid enouhg to get yourself killed doing so, I don’t see how this is my problem.
September 11th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
It’s amazing when people complain about being safe. Ironic that this was posted near 9/11. There were a lot of people that were told to go back because all was safe in the North tower and look what happened.
Sometimes erring on the side of caution is the highest and best action simply because certain outside factors cannot be controlled.
If you look at how erratically Fay moved and made landfall in this state on 3 occasions, it highlights just how one slight variation and Pinellas County surrounded by water on 3 sides could’ve been inundated with 20+ inches of rain and high surf.
Someone should be glad that there are people out there who care more about overall safety of the people who reside in the county than a bit of lost revenue.
Maybe those that are complaining most should spend a little more time beefing up their ad campaigns for the beautiful, upcoming 5 months that we call winter.
September 11th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Next time just let their a$$’s get blown away.
September 12th, 2008 at 4:23 am
Hurricanes don’t sneak up on you. The county acted too fast. The cost to businesses big and small was in the millions. Remember who pays a big part of our taxes - tourists. Calling for an evacuation three days before any possible landfall was jumping the gun. It cost every citizen money.
What will happen if they cry wolf and people quit listening?