The General Population In Tampa Were Better Organised Than Local Officials
Posted By Paul Grimsley On Tuesday, September 26, 2017
One of the things you don't expect a hurricane to prompt is the kind of disagreement that occurred between Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, and County Administrator Mike Merrill. As someone living in a place that, at the time, was expected to take a direct hit from Irma, you want a united front from the people in charge of deciding whether or not you should evacuate.
We were in Zone A, which should have been a mandatory evacuation, which the Mayor tried to order, but local government officials complained he had overstepped the boundaries of his authority, and so the order became instead a voluntary evacuation.
Obviously, Tampa was lucky, and Irma had both weakened, and also didn't hit directly, but it could have been a very different story, and thanks to conflicting messages a lot of people were not as prepared as they could have been.
The announcement from the Mayor on the Friday before Irma was due to hit directed people to the shelters that had been set up, but Hillsborough hadn't actually opened them at that point. Buckhorn issued a curfew; Merrill said there was none. This kind of problem is not without precedent, but it definitely needs to get handled. It is understood that Irma was downgrading as she hit Tampa, but the prediction was that it might have picked up speed and kept spinning fast enough to remain a category 4 - it was all dependent on whether it moved across the land and slowed down or moved across the water and picked up speed because of the heat in the water.
People, on the whole were great with each other, and despite the idea that everyone was in a state of panic, most people seemed calm and collected, and went about getting the things that they needed without incident. For sure, it was not the easiest thing getting gas, and water became scarce pretty quickly, as did canned goods, but it seemed that most people were better coordinated than the government officials.
We were in Zone A, which should have been a mandatory evacuation, which the Mayor tried to order, but local government officials complained he had overstepped the boundaries of his authority, and so the order became instead a voluntary evacuation.
Obviously, Tampa was lucky, and Irma had both weakened, and also didn't hit directly, but it could have been a very different story, and thanks to conflicting messages a lot of people were not as prepared as they could have been.
The announcement from the Mayor on the Friday before Irma was due to hit directed people to the shelters that had been set up, but Hillsborough hadn't actually opened them at that point. Buckhorn issued a curfew; Merrill said there was none. This kind of problem is not without precedent, but it definitely needs to get handled. It is understood that Irma was downgrading as she hit Tampa, but the prediction was that it might have picked up speed and kept spinning fast enough to remain a category 4 - it was all dependent on whether it moved across the land and slowed down or moved across the water and picked up speed because of the heat in the water.
People, on the whole were great with each other, and despite the idea that everyone was in a state of panic, most people seemed calm and collected, and went about getting the things that they needed without incident. For sure, it was not the easiest thing getting gas, and water became scarce pretty quickly, as did canned goods, but it seemed that most people were better coordinated than the government officials.
