Floridians make final preparations for Hurricane Dorian

Nick Smiciklas makes his final preparations to his home in Vero Beach, Fla. as a hurricane warning was issued for Indian River County as Hurricane Dorian continues to threaten the coast.

Nick Smiciklas makes his final preparations to his home in Vero Beach, Fla. as a hurricane warning was issued for Indian River County as Hurricane Dorian continues to threaten the coast.

As Hurricane Dorian nearly stalled over the Bahamas Monday, Florida officials nervously eyed a projected turn north that could still drench the densely populated east coast with storm surge and rainfall and knock out power depending on how closely it skirts the shore.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, in a Monday morning briefing at the state emergency operations center, continued to urge residents to prepare for the major hurricane, which is expected to lash the coast for days.

Mandatory evacuation orders had been issued for parts of nearly every county on the state’s eastern seaboard from Palm Beach to Nassau, and DeSantis urged people to heed those orders from local authorities.

“Get out now while you have time or there’s fuel available, and you’ll be safe on the roads,” he said.

Several tolls had been suspended along major roadways to ease evacuations, and DeSantis said he had also expanded the suspension of tolls to include roads in and around Jacksonville, including the First Coast Expressway and the I-295 express lane.

The Central Florida Expressway Authority also suspended tolls on several roads, including SR 408, SR 414, SR 451, SR 453, SR 538 and SR 551.

Florida Power & Light, the main utility company for most of the coastal counties likely to be affected, had pre-staged about 17,000 people to assist with power restoration after the storm comes through, DeSantis said.

State officials are also watching health care facilities in the potential path of the storm. Seventy-two assisted living facilities and nursing homes have been evacuated along the coast. Seven hospitals — Advent Health in New Smyrna Beach in Volusia County, Cape Canaveral in Brevard, Cleveland Clinic South in Martin County, Port St. Lucie Hospital in St. Lucie, Samaritan Medical Center in Palm Beach, Stuart Sebastian River Medical Center in Indian River County and Halifax Psychiatric Center North in Volusia — were also fully evacuated. An eighth hospital, Cleveland Clinic North in Martin County, was partially evacuated before Dorian arrives.

Residents and patients are being moved to sister facilities or other hospitals, Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Mary Mayhew said. She added that health officials are monitoring a statewide emergency status system to keep tabs on the status of long term care facilities, though she stressed that emergency responses would be all “locally driven.”

Of thousands of facilities, about 30 along the coast have not been providing updates to the state, she said. She said some AHCA personnel and local authorities had been reaching out to those facilities to monitor their preparedness.

As of Monday morning, Hurricane Dorian had yet take the much-anticipated turn north away from the coast as forecasters predict, lingering about 110 miles off the coat of West Palm Beach. Its winds, with sustained speeds of 155 miles per hour, were expected to batter the Bahamas for much of the day before the storm skirts the Florida coast through Wednesday.

As Dorian’s future track, which has stymied forecasters’ efforts for days, remained uncertain, the state’s emergency operations center stayed at the highest alert levels. State Emergency Response Team logistics chief Eugene Buerkle said in a morning briefing that teams are continuing to move supplies and resources like generators from non-impacted western counties in the Panhandle like Leon and Liberty.

DeSantis continued to warn residents that the storm’s path could still shift slightly, with large consequences.

“Today is a critical day for the direction this storm takes,” DeSantis told the Weather Channel. “It is very close to some of these communities on Florida’s east coast. A wobble here, a wobble there, and you’re looking at potentially catastrophic impacts.”

Elizabeth Koh is a state government reporter in the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times’ Tallahassee bureau, where she covers health care politics and policy (and the occasional hurricane). A Brown University graduate, she has also covered local politics for the Washington Post and national politics for the Dallas Morning News’ D.C. bureau.





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