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Bay Area Businesses Brace For Fay
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Published: August 19, 2008
TAMPA - Grocery stores did a brisk business in bottled water, bread, milk and other staples, while home improvement stores rang up plywood, generator and battery sales Monday as Tampa Bay area residents prepared for Tropical Storm Fay.
Meanwhile, airlines, big tourism spots and other businesses made their own preparations.
Tampa International Airport said it planned to operate today, but St. Petersburg-Clearwater Airport said it may close if a mandatory evacuation for low-lying areas in Pinellas County remains in effect.
TIA officials said one airline, JetBlue Airways, planned to cancel flights into and out of Tampa today. AirTran Airways told TIA officials it planned to cancel morning flights into and out of Tampa. Other airlines said they would issue flight advisories today based on the track of the storm.
TIA officials urged passengers to contact airlines they are scheduled to travel today or Wednesday to check on flight delays or cancellations.
For ground travelers, gasoline should be plentiful. Supplies stocked at Port of Tampa terminals are adequate to meet supply needs in Central Florida while the storm crosses Florida, state officials said Monday.
Robby Cunningham, a spokesman for the state's Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee, said there is a nine-day supply of fuel for the entire state. No more shipments of fuel will come into the port until the Coast Guard re-opens shipping lanes.
The Coast Guard closed the Port of Tampa on Monday at 10 a.m. to all vessels except those within the port itself.
As the Coast Guard was securing the port and shipping lanes, utilities in the Tampa region said they were making preparations for power outages.
Utilities Prepared
Chuck Black, president of Tampa Electric, said several hundred linemen and tree trimmers from utility companies throughout the Southeast were en route Monday to Florida to helplocal utilities restore power quickly in the event the storm causes widespread power outages.
"They are rolling this way now to assist us," said Black.
Progress Energy, which provides electricity to Pinellas County and parts of Pasco, said it also was putting its storm plan into gear.
Tampa Electric plans to have about 120 customer service representatives working Tuesday to take customer calls about power problems.
Telephone companies also said they were preparing for the storm.
Tropical Storm Fay could provide the first major test of how well cellular and telephone companies strengthened their networks after the storms in 2005.
In the past few years, telephone, cable TV and Internet companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade their systems with backup generators, heavy-duty batteries, extra equipment and redundant systems.
Since 2007, Sprint has installed permanent electric generators at more than 1,000 additional cellular towers in hurricane-prone areas in the Southeast. Verizon Wireless just this year finished a $20 million upgrade to its main switching facility in Tampa, which handles all its calls in the Tampa Bay region, and upgraded its cellular sites for plug-in power generators.
Insurance Industry Readies
Florida's property insurers have claims adjusters and agents standing by to evaluate any damage caused by Tropical Storm Fay, but insurance officials aren't expecting a large number of claims.
The tropical storm is expected to turn into a Category 1 hurricane, but damage from a hurricane of that size is typically minimal, said Sam Miller, a spokesman for the Florida Insurance Council.
State Farm Florida, the state's second largest property insurer, said its 5,000 Florida employees can probably handle claims resulting from a Category 1 hurricane. State Farm said its national catastrophe team of 5,000 people, including agents and claims adjusters, is ready to respond to the Florida storm if called upon.
"They've been on alert since Friday," State Farm spokesman Chris Neal said. "We're crossing our fingers that we don't need anything close to that. But if we need them, we've got them."
If you're planning to close on a home sale today or Wednesday, you'd best double-check whether you have homeowners insurance.
Any time damaging weather threatens Florida, virtually all insurers temporarily freeze writing new policies.
Dan Cucchi, of the Horace Mann insurance agency in Tampa, said most insurance companies won't accept new policies as long as a named storm is projected to hit the state.
"If they've already signed the insurance papers, they're protected," he said.
Tourism Industry Braces
The Tampa Bay area's tourism industry also geared up for the storm Monday.
Busch Gardens Tampa Bay and Adventure Island will be closed today to protect animals, staff members and visitors, Busch officials said.
However, The Florida Aquarium in downtown Tampa plans to open today, aquarium officials said.
The Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners issued a state of emergency evacuation order for Pinellas "Level A" areas and mobile home residents Monday afternoon, but reserved the right to rescind the mandatory evacuation order if conditions change.
Tourism officials could not estimate Monday how many of the estimated 250,000 evacuees would be hotel and motel guests. Much of the near-30-mile length of Pinellas County coastline along the Gulf of Mexico is lined with hotels, motels and condominiums.
Brisk Business At Stores
As utilities and airlines prepared to deal with Fay, some Bay area business saw brisk sales.
The Home Depot store in Brandon had a flood of customers late Monday. Hot sellers included bottled water, power generators, plywood and batteries, store manager Don Jungbauer said.
"Generators have been selling like crazy," he said. "We've gone through thousands of pallets of bottled water."
Major grocers also reported strong business Monday for storm supplies, including canned goods and batteries, but managed to keep shelves resupplied with deliveries from area warehouses.
The majority of Publix stores in Florida have been equipped with back-up power generators to keep the stores in operation and refrigeration working in the event commercial power is lost.
Sweetbay Supermarket spokeswoman Nicole LeBeau said none of its local stores ran out of storm supplies, such as bottled water, Monday.
"If a store was running short, we had plenty to ship from our Plant City warehouse," LeBeau said.
Reporters Richard Mullins, Shannon Behnken and Russell Ray contributed to this report. Ted Jackovics can be reached at tjackovics@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7817.
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