St Pete Hurricane Expo - Capt Garth Swingle SPFR

St. Petersburg is holding its annual hurricane preparedness expo Thursday (30th) at the J.W. Cate Recreation Center. The gym will be filled with exhibitors, information and swag along with tips for dealing with a big storm. We speak with St. Pete Fire Rescue Lieutenant Garth Swingle. 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Gordon Bird here with Beyond the News, and it's hurricane season again and cities
and counties all around Florida are gettingready for the upcoming season and trying to
get their residents ready. We haveCaptain Garth Swingle with Saint Petersburg Fire Rescue
on the line, and we're goingto be talking about an event coming up
that is happening on May the thirtieth, which is Thursday, and that's going

(00:26):
to be about preparing people for ahurricane. And Saint Petersburg has seen its
share of impact from hurricanes over thelast few years, even though there hasn't
been what you might call a directhit. So very important, especially if
you're close to the water. Solet's go to Captain Garth Swinkle and say
a good day to you, sir, Well, good day to you,

(00:48):
and thank you very much for havingme here. All right, So what's
going to be covered and what's goingto be available and what can people learn
at this hurricane Preparedness Expo that's happeningThursday. So here in Saint Petersburg we're
having a hurricane expo. We dothis every year right before the very first
day of hurricane season, starting Junefirst, so May thirtieth, we're going

(01:11):
to start it off. Kick itoff, well, hope everybody's going to
get prepared and this is going tobe an event open to the public.
It's going to be hosted at theJWK Recreation Center over in Northwest. It's
going to be fifty eighth one twentysecond Avenue North from five point thirty to
seven and we're opening up the entiregymnasium for anybody in the public to come

(01:33):
by and get whatever information you need. We're really making sure that everybody has
a plan. Everybody understands the risk, knows what zone they are in,
understands what basics applies to have,and when to evacuate and what to do.
Various organizations are going to be thereto completely fill up the gymnasium.

(01:57):
It is going to be a lotof free donations obviously while supplies last,
and those include, as I see, flashlights, first aid kits, hurricane
preparedness guides among others, so basicallyenough to really get you started as far
as building your basic supplies to beready for a hurricane, the tools that
you will need to get through it, to get through the power outages and

(02:22):
everything else you have to deal with. That's correct and projected. This is
shown to be a very active hurricaneseason and people new to the area might
have never been through this before andnot know what to do. So come
on out, you'll have everything explained. We will go over whatever you need
to understand, and every question aswelcome. There are no dumb questions A

(02:45):
lot of people think that, butsimple things of what to expect with the
tropical weather, and how to findyour evacuation zones, your shelters. You
can go to how to receive updatesproperly, stacking of sand bags and the
dews and don'ts of to pre pickup. And that's a great point as
well as far as because there isa right way in the wrong way.

(03:07):
Fortunately I haven't had to use them. I live inland, but there is
a right way and the wrong wayto stack the sand bags in order to
protect your property. Yeah, that'scorrect. Some people might grab them and
go, you know what, let'sjust put them up. But yeah,
actually block the weather from coming becausestorm surge comes up, and storm surge

(03:27):
is something you should run from.So water is something you run from and
you hide from the wind. Soprotecting your home. A lot of people
want to before they evacuate protected theirhome with the sandbags so they'll come back
to a nice home that's not damaged. So got to understand how to do
all of that. Even though SaintPetersburg has not seen a direct hit from
a hurricane recently, it has hada lot of flooding to deal with in

(03:52):
low lying areas of the city.Yeah, that's correct. I mean we're
Penel's County. We're surrounded by waterSaint Petersburg and not very many very high
areas. So it shows how muchwater can get into certain places. And
we saw that with the last hurricane, Hurricane Ian showed to quite a bit
of a storm surge that did affecta lot of people and a lot of

(04:15):
damage had happened. So we wantto make sure that people are prepared and
really have a plan and know whatto do, all right, So once
again the win and the war forthis hurricane Preparedness Expo in Saint Petersburg,
YEP. So it's going to beThursday, May thirtieth, from five point
thirty to seven pm at the jwK Recreation Center. That's fifty eighth one

(04:39):
twenty second Avenue, North in SaintPetersburg, all right, Captain Garth Swingle,
Saint Petersburg Fire Rescue, thank youfor joining us on beyond the news.
Thank you very much.