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New evacuation maps planned

The new versions will incorporate changes made to more than 107,000 parcels after an initial printing.

By ADRIENNE P. SAMUELS
Published July 7, 2005

Pinellas County plans to print new evacuation maps by July 31, in time for the heart of the hurricane season.

The new maps will correct the evacuation levels for more than 107,000 Pinellas households and businesses with levels that changed only days after more than 300,000 maps were printed and distributed in late May.

The county allowed the old maps to be printed while they planned to update the evacuation levels using more detailed data about individual properties. The maps were included in the St. Petersburg Times' Pinellas editions May 29.

Now the county plans to pay about $18,300 to print at least 290,000 new maps with more detailed information about evacuation levels. The maps would be distributed in the Times on July 31.

The county is also considering whether to use software to automatically call each resident in a changed zone, asking them to get on the county's Web site or to call the county to learn more about the changes.

"We're looking at some of the issues related to printing the maps," said Marcia Crawley, county spokeswoman. "We want to make sure we can print them to give our citizens a little more detail."

These issues include figuring out exactly how to print a detailed map covering Florida's most densely populated county. The map may be printed in four quadrants that should be detailed enough to show every major street. Small streets won't be named.

County officials spent the past two weeks meeting with the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council to iron out the details of the changes. The planning council put together the original evacuation maps for Pinellas in addition to maps for Hernando, Citrus, Manatee, Polk, Sarasota, Pasco and Hillsborough counties.

Though evacuation zones in other counties aren't nearly as precise as Pinellas', the rest of Tampa Bay is not in danger, said Avera Wynne, the council's planning director.

The planning council approves of Pinellas' method of updating the maps and agrees that pairing storm surge levels with local topography makes for a more accurate map.

"It's just a little more precise," said Wynne. "Before, you erred on the side of being conservative and putting fewer people at risk. Having this methodology is going to take a lot of the judgment calls out of it."

In late May, Pinellas figured a way to marry traditional storm surge data with detailed elevation and topography data for every address in Pinellas. But by the time the method was perfected, some 330,000 fewer precise maps had already been printed. The county attempted to alert people to the changes in utility bills, but that didn't do anything to help those who lived in apartment complexes or who didn't get county utilities.

Some 66,790 of the county's 420,000 lots were switched to a more dangerous level - from zone C to zone A, for example. About 40,449 parcels went to a less dangerous level. Some of the changes were due to exit routes. For example, the entire island of Coquina Key in St. Petersburg was rezoned to an A. That's mostly because there is only one way off the island and in a storm, that bridge would be underwater, officials said.

County Administrator Steve Spratt said he has asked his staff to "triple-check" the data before its release date.

"What we'll be trying to do is target those that have a change," Spratt said.

In the meantime, people can look online at http://www.pinellascounty.org/emergency/

Adrienne Samuels can be reached at 445-4157 or samuels@sptimes.com

[Last modified July 7, 2005, 01:01:15]