A mobile home park's board votes to lock its clubhouse during evacuations.
By RICHARD DANIELSON, Times Staff Writer
Published June 17, 2005
PALM HARBOR - When the evacuation orders came during last summer's hurricanes, dozens of residents at the Blue Jay Estates mobile home park didn't stay home, but they didn't go to a public shelter, either.
They went to their park's clubhouse, where they played cards, watched television and felt safe and secure, surrounded by friends.
If a hurricane threatens again this summer, they won't have that option.
After having a structural engineer examine the clubhouse, the board of directors at Blue Jay Estates recently voted 3-1 to close and lock the clubhouse during hurricane evacuations. No one, they said, will be allowed inside.
The building, the engineer said in a report, was not built to withstand winds stronger than 75 mph. By comparison, tropical storms are classified as Category 1 hurricanes when their winds reach 74 mph.
To residents, some of whom have flocked to the clubhouse since Hurricane Elena in 1985, the June 6 decision came as a shock.
"I'm upset and so are many other people who live here," said Nancy Pizzato, 61.
Located on the north side of Curlew Road, east of U.S. 19, Blue Jay Estates is a tightly knit, neatly kept community of 235 homes. The residents own the 55-and-older park. The homes are well maintained, lushly landscaped and surrounded by neatly trimmed lawns.
"People here have felt safe going there," Pizzato said of the clubhouse, which has storm shutters. "It kind of takes the edge off the worry. I've talked to so many older people in here, and they're upset because they don't know what they're going to do."
This is not an isolated incident, said Pinellas County emergency management director Gary Vickers.
"I've talked with numerous parks before on this same issue and advised them that that's something that you need to really make sure you cover the bases on," Vickers said. He tells mobile home parks that it might be a good idea to use their clubhouses as shelters, but only if the buildings meet the same storm survival criteria as public shelters.
"It's not as simple as saying, "Let's all gather in the clubhouse,"' he said.
At Blue Jay Estates, many residents say that not only do they feel safe there but also that they should have the right to go there if they wish.
"I don't like the idea of saying to me, "You can't come in that clubhouse,"' said John Palange, 83, a former president of the board. "I own that clubhouse."
But two of the three board members who voted for the change said they had little choice about what to do once they got the engineer's report.
"We were advised by the engineer, by our attorney and by our insurance company not to use the building," said board member Paulette Derr, 71, a retired banker. "I could not feel happy with myself to tell people, "I know the building is not safe, but what the heck, you've done it before, go and do it again."'
Board member David Ankeny, a 65-year-old retired steel worker, said he asked residents, "If your children were in this building, and you knew this building was unsafe, would you let them go into it?
"They wouldn't do that with their children; why would they do that with their own lives?" he said. "It doesn't compute."
Retired fish hatchery worker Jim McConnell, 79, was the only board member to vote against the change. He said he thought that residents had not been heard and that the building had been used as a shelter in the past. McConnell said that residents talked to local television meteorologists who told them that Palm Harbor has not seen winds of 75 mph in the last 20 years.
To meet the same criteria as a public hurricane shelter, a building should have, among other things, reinforced concrete walls, hurricane straps that secure the roof to the walls, adequate coverings for the windows, inside bathrooms and food preparation facilities, Vickers said. It should not have trees that could topple onto the shelter or flat roofs that could lift off in high winds.
Problem is, few clubhouses are built to be sturdy enough to act as shelters in storms. When the county began using those standards in its own shelters eight years ago, it dropped many buildings because they didn't meet the criteria, Vickers said.
And retrofitting a mobile home park clubhouse can be expensive, he said.
"There are quite a few (parks) that have looked at it," Vickers said. "I don't know of any that have actually done it."
Some residents say they understand the board's concerns about liability, and they say they are willing to accept that risk. A petition now in circulation in the park says that the residents who sign it are willing to absolve the park and the insurance company of all liability for their use of the clubhouse during a storm.
"How good that's going to be," McConnell said, "I don't know."
Times photographer Douglas R. Clifford contributed to this report.
