It's 25, perhaps 30 miles away from the coast, he said and it still saw dramatic impacts from the storm's landfall as well as storm surge that, in blocking the flow of rivers into the gulf, caused even more flooding.
But Pinellas County, he said, essentially is the coast. The county's topography consists of two relatively high areas surrounded by land that gently slopes to the gulf and the bay on either side. Should severe flooding occur, those two high spots would become islands. Barrier islands and other swaths of waterfront would be underwater.
"We are a peninsula. We're right on the bay. And so we are very vulnerable,” Welch said Monday.
While the region has faced the wrath of some nasty tropical storms and was brushed by a hurricane or two in recent years, it's been 13 years since a major hurricane came close to making landfall in the Tampa Bay area (Hurricane Charley in 2004).
Even though Pinellas County and the region as a whole have been relatively lucky over the years, Pinellas and neighboring counties have seen dramatic flooding from relatively small storms like Tropical Storm Colin and even some unnamed storms that routinely blow through the region during the summer months. Welch said the county maintains an emergency plan for dealing with a major storm should it hit — and to determine how much climate change impacts like sea-level rise could exacerbate flooding, but of particular concern, he said, is the grim prospect of residents in the lowest-lying areas of the county not heeding evacuation orders as a storm nears, due to either their being new to the region or falling into complacency over the years.
“We think we're in good shape, but until you actually get that hit, and see how people respond to it, especially the early evacuation places — people have to respond,” Welch said.
U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist (D-St. Petersburg), who was Attorney General of Florida over the intense 2004 and 2005 storm seasons, said he's also concerned about how the threat of a major storm might not seem real to locals.
“We've have a lot of experience with hurricanes in Florida in the past," he said. "But sometimes you get hurricane amnesia, and forget how severe these things [are] and how quickly they can come up.”
Pinellas County has five designated evacuation zones (not including the above-mentioned higher-ground areas). Within those areas are shelters for evacuees who aren't able to make it further inland. Welch said if voters approve an extension of Penny for Pinellas this November, there's a plan to built more shelter space.
Crist said despite political differences that divide leaders at local, state and federal levels, officials need to be on the same page when it comes to coordinating response to major storms
There's another lesson in this, he said, that should compel Florida's opposing political factions to see eye-to-eye.
“Climate change is real," Crist said. "We are the state that is the most susceptible to rising sea levels. If they're seeing it in Houston, imagine what we would be seeing here in Florida and in particular Pinellas County.”
This article appears in Aug 24-31, 2017.
