you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you I mean, I mean, no, I gotta go. you you you All right, let us know when David's ready. All right. All right. Let us know when David's ready. All right. All right. Let us know when David's ready. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. Let us know when David's ready. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. Good afternoon. This is a press conference and welcome to the media and those that are with us today, this October 7, 2024. This press conference is to provide an update on Hurricane Milton's forecast and the city's preparation and provide instructions and information to the community. I have received and was with the city manager and his staff and first responders on the preparedness of the city and I assure you that we are prepared and they are prepared to do their part. So this part has already been complete. I have announced and signed the Declaration of a local emergency, state of emergency. That was today and I will be announcing or announcing right now that we are going to have any mandatory evacuation for zones A and B I will be announcing or announcing right now that we are going to have any evacuation, mandatory evacuation for zones A and B effective at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. With us today is the City Manager, Mr. Bhutishwar, Chief Pennington, Chief Dominguez, and Mr. Middleton that will speak about our Preparedness and give further details and I'll have some closing remarks. Thank you for being here Mr. Bitterswar Thank you mayor and good afternoon everyone We know that there is a lot of anxiety in the community So what we wanted to do today is provide some information and we're committed to continue providing information to the community as we know more. So I'm going to talk very, very quickly here and turn it over to our chiefs and director Middleton to elaborate on our preparedness actions that we've been taken. Let me first start with the forecast. So for those of you who have been following this storm's evolution, it is now a category five storm. Forecasters have predicted rapid intensification and that has come to fruition. Winds are at 160 miles per hour. It's currently moving about nine miles an hour east southeast but is projected to turn to the northeast later this evening and towards the Florida Peninsula. At this point and this is all subject to change but at this point the projected landfall area is forecasted to happen in the evening of Wednesday. APM is the tentative or projected time frame in the Tampa Bay area. Now again, I want to underscore that that is a projection. There are a lot of variables that could impact the ultimate trajectory and speed of this storm. Once it does make landfall, this storm is expected to move very, very quickly over the state of Florida and into the Atlantic Ocean in the early morning hours on Thursday. Chief Pentington will discuss in a bit more detail about the anticipated weather, specifically storm surge, but we have been advising the community and I want to emphasize to the community especially those who experienced Hurricane EN two years ago that we are expecting conditions similar to EN and we need to make sure we're taking the storm very, very seriously. We've been in close coordination with our county and state partners over the last several days. Close communication with county manager and we as the mayor mentioned county commission also declared a local state of emergency at 1130 this morning and issued the mandatory evacuation order. Yesterday we did issue a voluntary evacuation order. Now it's mandatory and this is effective at 6 a.m. So let's talk a little bit about what that means and I'm going to let Chief Pennington elaborate as well. It means it doesn't mean that you need to leave the state. It means that you need to vacate zones A and B. These are our vulnerable areas that could succumb to storm surge. You only need to move a few miles. You don't need to move across the state or out of the state. In terms of shelters, we've been advised by the county that shelter information will be provided early tomorrow morning. So the announcement was made today. So those in evacuation zones A and B can begin making preparations and we will be pushing out a communication a little bit later this afternoon with information about the types of things you should take with you whether you're going to a hotel, to a friend's house, or to a shelter. We will provide some helpful tips to you. In terms of preparations our city crews and staff have been busy all weekend. We've been preparing for this storm and preparing for a worst-case scenario since yesterday. We've been in the field today and will continue to be in the field tomorrow getting the community prepared. We need the community to do their part. So if you haven't already done so you need to prepare your homes and you need to prepare your families. Our focus is protecting life and then property second. Life first property second so make sure you're doing your part. We do want to announce that we will be closing access to the pier, the pier parking lot, our parks and our beach ends at 6 p.m. today. So there will be no parking at the beach ends, no parking at the pier, and no access to the pier and parks effective at 6 p.m. today. I also want to advise to expect a curfew to be put in place for motor vehicles as weather conditions deteriorate. We don't have a time yet, but we do want to put the community on alert that we will need for you to stay off the roads. These are life threatening conditions that we are expecting to experience. The last thing I want to mention before I introduce Chief Pennington is that city offices will close tomorrow morning and will stay close through Thursday. This will allow our staff to have 100% focus on preparing the community for the impacts of this storm. With that, let me turn it over to Fire Chief Pennington. Thank you. As previously stated, the main concern we have with this storm going into it is storm surge. If you're not aware, the deadliest part of a hurricane is typically the storm surge. I advise everybody to take heed of the situation and understand that we are currently under a storm surge watch. And that means that potentially with the four to seven foot surge, this could be catastrophic to our area. I would recommend that you heed the warnings for the evacuations, make your plans, and move out of the area. This is the best thing you can do to help not only yourself, but overall our response. You have to keep in mind that you're just gonna come a point when we're not gonna be able to get to you, when the winds reach a certain miles per hour, when it's a traffic system, traffic force winds, we're not gonna be able to get to you with, there's flooding, which warnings, make good decisions. Do what you got to do to protect yourself now. Thank you. Good afternoon. I am Cyril de Mingus, Chief of Police, and I'm going to give you a bit of an update on where public safety is, how we've prepared for this event. First and foremost, if you live in the city, the county, or Marko Island understand that all law enforcement and all public safety personnel, fire departments have been working together as the city manager said all weekend. We have coordinated all our assets and are ready to support each other regardless of what the circumstances are, but we need your help and we need your partnership. If you heed the advice, as the chief said, if you can move to higher ground and evacuation is just going somewhere that doesn't flood. Somewhere where it's safe. So look around, family, friends, or just move out of the affected areas, AMB as we mentioned, but your city systems are in place. We have all the things ready to respond to whatever the occurrences are. And that's important. So we need your help. For example, if the order goes through for driving curfew, please don't drive. Because it puts police officers and firefighters in harm's way trying to get to you when you get your car stuck in the water. So he'd that advice and he'd that warning. Don't drive in the streets. If, unless it's an emergency, please stay in your homes. Don't drive. Second to that, we don't want people to use the parking garages for electric vehicles specifically on the first floor. If you park on the first floor, it causes issues for flooding and those vehicles have a tendency to catch on fire, so we'll have to have it towed. Don't park electric vehicles on the first floors of parking garages. When it comes to the curfew, again, stay off the streets. Let us protect you, you stay home. You protect your loved ones, we'll protect the property and people, but we need your cooperation to make this emergency plan work. And lastly, it depends on all these conditions. They have been flow flow, no pun. And so we ask you to stay attention, pay attention to the news, weather reports, the radios, our communications. The city puts them out, the county puts them out. Pay attention to what's going on and make good decisions, good common sense as everyone has said here, and work with us to help you stay safe. Good afternoon. I'm Bob Middleton, Director of Public Works for the City of Naples. We'll start out with Solid Waste Services. Our Solid Waste Services will continue today and through tomorrow. We will suspend services for collection of Solid Waste, garbage, recycle material, and horticulture material after Tuesday. If the citizens that have not had service this week, if they can maintain all of their garbage cans, recycle containers, on their property, do not add horticulture material to the right of way. Anything, as the previous chief said, surge is going to be an issue that we're dealing with. Anything that's in the right of way is lower to the right of way. Anything, as the previous chief said, surge is gonna be an issue that we're dealing with. Anything that's in the right of way is lower to the street. It will be picked up by the surge and it can be and will be used to cover storm inlets. So we wanna try to do what we can do to keep our storm inlets open so that the city will properly drain through the gravity system that we have. Talking about storm water a little bit. The city, as the city manager said, the city has been very proactive in trying to keep storm inlets cleared. We're sweeping the streets to keep that debris off the streets that will ultimately wind up in the stormwater system. And keep in mind our system is a gravity system. It operates as when it fills up. It will discharge to surface water of the area. So those greats have got to stay open. However, when the surge comes in, that tide will be higher than the storm water system. So the storm water system will not do any good during a surge situation. Thank you very much. To the residents, visitors, I just want you to take this very seriously. I have seen the destruction firsthand that happens from a surge and happens from a devastating hurricane. I cannot stress enough that you're prepared, that you get your items that you need for your personal, for your pets. Anything that you might need when you evacuate, but please, please take this seriously. The most important thing is that we save lives. We need to keep you safe and we'll keep you posted. If you have not registered to receive our updates by email, you can do so by going on Naplesgov.com and subscribe to emails and updates. I want to thank you for taking this seriously. I want to thank our staff for making sure that we are safe and protecting our community with that. Be safe. you you