Pinellas County local state of emergency comes with major warnings ahead of Helene

PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) — Pinellas County is officially under a local state of emergency after county leaders met for an emergency meeting Tuesday morning.

Emergency Management leaders said Pinellas County could see more storm surge than its ever seen before.

Our Max Defender 8 meteorologists are projecting the storm surge could be 5 to 8 feet.

“Because this is such a fast-moving storm, you really do need to be paying attention and watching the news and looking for alerts,” County Commissioner Kathleen Peters said. “Because it is so fast-moving, things are going to happen quickly and then you are going to have respond quickly if you want to protect your family and your pets.”

County leaders believe there will be evacuations, but officials will wait until the storm is closer to landfall to make the call.

Some Pinellas County neighborhoods have recently flooded from just rainwater.

The ground is saturated, and emergency management wants you to be aware that trees and light poles could be uprooted.

They also believe waterways will overflow. Because of how full they already are from recent rain, emergency management said floodwaters could take 24 to 36 hours to go down. They suggest having two plans: one for an evacuation and one for sheltering in place.

The county’s Emergency Operations Center is currently partially activated with plans to fully activate it on Wednesday.

Pinellas County Schools are officially closed on Wednesday, Sept. 25, and Thursday, Sept. 26.

An emergency plan for tourists is expected to come, emergency leaders said they would work on it when a county commissioner brought her concerns to light.

County leaders pushed the website disaster.pinellas.gov for additional questions. It has information related to zoning, evacuation orders, shelters, and sandbag pickup sites. You can also sign up for Pinellas County push alerts here.

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