“It’s like we’re in this sweet spot. It’s like we’re blessed somehow, protected.”
Allison Yeh, a planner for Hillsborough County in Tampa
(As quoted in the Washington Post/July 2017.)
“We’re about to get punched in the face.”
Tampa mayor Bob Buckhorn /September 10, 2017
“By a stroke of gambler’s luck, Tampa Bay hasn’t suffered a direct hit from a hurricane as powerful as a category 3 or higher in nearly a century. Tampa has doubled down on a bet that another won’t strike anytime soon, investing billions of dollars in high-rise condominiums along the waterfront and shipping port upgrades and expanding a hospital on an island in the middle of the bay to make it one of the largest in the state.”
Darryl Fears
Tampa Bay’s Coming Storm
Washington Post, July 28, 2017
In 2010, the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council produced The Tampa Bay Catastrophic Plan regarding Hurricane Phoenix described as “a fictitious storm created to simulate the effects of a worst‐case scenario.”
The difference between that report and the real life Hurricane Irma is the fictitious hurricane was a category 5 storm and Hurricane Irma is currently at category 4. Some forecasters predict that Hurricane Irma will be downgraded to a category 3 when it hits the Tampa/St. Pete area—but that’s still winds between 111 to 130 mph.
And in a land with a large population of mobile homes there’s bound to be destruction form the only the wind. But perhaps more from the water surge. The purpose of the report was how the area should respond in various scenarios..
The goal of this planning process is to develop strategies that will help the Tampa Bay region to recover and rebuild after such a devastating catastrophe.”
So while the area hasn’t been hit hard by a hurricane in almost 100 years, they’ve known they are not immune. Here’s a video that was also produced as part of the Phoenix project.
Watching that video, reading the report—along with the Tampa Bay’s Coming Storm article by Darryl Fears has been a better use of my time as I wait out this storm here in central Florida with the rain and wind just starting to kick up. (I’ve also been re-reading the 1977 John D. MacDonald novel Condominium that tracks what happens when people bite off a little too much of paradise as a hurricane hits the west coast of Florida.
Let’s hope that the damage from Hurricane Irma is limited to only buildings and infrastructures. Thanks to all the first responders working around the clock.
In 24 hours or so this hurricane will be reduced to a tropical storm, the sun will come out again, the finger pointing will begin, and humans will do what they’ve doing after every setback since the beginning of time—regroup and then rebuild or move on.