Emergency manager: City employees get credit for fast recovery

Sarasota’s rapid recovery from Hurricane Ian is in no small part credited to all the city’s departments preparing in advance of and taking action immediately after the storm cleared, according to Todd Kerkering, the city’s emergency manager.

At the end of Monday’s City Commission meeting, Kerkering provided a recap of actions taken by the city and its employees during and after the storm.

“All of the departments handled their actions very well and appropriately, getting all our equipment taken care of everything topped off with fuel, implementing our emergency contracts we had in place and notifying those contractors after the standby,” Kerkering told commissioners. “During the impact phase we probably had 300-plus employees staged around the city at various safe locations so that when the winds dropped to 45 and we had good daylight hours we could start punching back out to the city and identifying our priorities of work. That was handled flawlessly by the employees.”

By Friday afternoon, all employees had been accounted for, which Kerkering called a high priority. Some who live south of the city, where the damage was significantly worse, have lost their homes. The city’s human resources department is working to connect them with charitable groups and agencies that provide assistance.

For the most part, city properties suffered minimal damage. Insurance adjusters have already made assessments of city properties, and department heads have been cleared to receive quotes on repair costs.

“Most were affected in some way — a cracked window, a broken window, a missing shingle here and there,” Kerkering said. “At Payne Park Auditorium, the roof did peel back a little bit, but we're trying to figure out with our insurance adjusters if it's a secondary roof that was actually placed on top.”

Among the status report:

• Development services began an assessment of residential properties immediately, finding 40% to 50% of homes in the city with some kind of minor damage such as missing sections of pool screen and missing tiles or shingles, but little that would render homes inhabitable.
• As of Monday evening, nine sewage lift stations remained on generator power, which are regularly checked and refueled to maintain operations.
• There were 42 water line breaks, all successfully repaired and back in operation.
• The city is supplying water to the Englewood Water District via tanker trucks.
• Solid waste collection has resumed to the normal schedule for garbage and recycling, although recycling collection may be suspended because the city is running out of room at its transfer station as the vendor that picks up the recycling has been without power.
• The police department is operating on normal shifts. A team of as many as 20 officers had been working in North Port, completing more than 75 rescues. Officers have also been directing traffic on Fruitville Road at Robarts Arena, where Florida Power & Light is staging power restoration operations.

Debris collections began this week, but Kerkering emphasized residents will need to exercise patience.

“Our debris contractors estimate that there's 150,000 to 200,000 cubic yards of landscape debris,” Kerkering said. “That is double the amount of (Hurricane) Irma. It took us a little over three months to get Irma cleaned up. I would anticipate since it's double, it could take us up to six months to get every street cleared and cleaned up.”

Kerkering credited city employees for working throughout the storm recovery, even as they are dealing with utility outages and damage to their own homes.

“We didn't get the impacts like they did down south, but I will tell you there were six solid waste workers who came in to work Saturday who did not have power at their house,” he said. “They had no water, had no sewer, but they came to work on Saturday to perform for the citizens of the city. We have lots of (employees) who are still suffering more than our citizens, and they're still coming to work and are putting in the effort.”