What is Labor Day weekend in Florida without a visit from Jim Cantore?
Just like Hurricane Idalia altered his plans last week, the major storm shook us for a loop here in Osceola County, even though it made its worst hit hundreds of miles up the Gulf coast.
And, just like forecasts change on the past of a hurricane like that, so did information about what was going on locally, particularly on Tuesday.
Here at the News-Gazette, Tuesdays are spent putting Thursday’s print product together, so we can ship it to the printing plant late that afternoon. Normally, it returns on the truck Wednesday to get in the vehicles that bring it to you Thursday. Last week, that timeline got shortened by Idalia, so by late lunchtime Tuesday we were “done” – we thought. So I ran to a local eatery to grab a bite to eat and decompress for a few minutes.
While eating my lunch I saw the alert that Gov. Ron DeSantis had added Osceola and Orange counties to his storm-related emergency declaration. “Oh boy, what’s this mean?” I thought.
Didn’t even take 15 minutes for that question to be answered. That’s how long it took for the Osceola School District to announce it was reversing its decision from that morning and would NOT open schools Wednesday. It started a domino effect, and within the next two hours every area government and utility agency announced Wednesday closures, after county officials announced at a 11:45 a.m. press conference that there wouldn’t be closures. Even our office would close.
When Category 3 and 4 hurricanes are involved, things come at you fast. Face it, we could have gone to work and to school in the weather we got Wednesday; we’ve gone in and driven home in far worse. But, for the schools, the events would have been a “bad look” in any case. At first, Osceola would have been an island on Wednesday, with Polk, Lake and Orange counties deciding to close. Then, by reversing course, some parents lashed out at the district and its fairly new superintendent Mark Shanoff for the course of events.
Come on, people. Decision makers do what they do based on the information they have at the time of making them. I actually liked the idea of schools staying open here at first. It meant not having to change up the schedule down the road to make up a day.
The district’s new superintendent has been solid and transparent. If nobody has told him this yet, Dr. Shanoff is on a roll.
And, now, we wait to see what future Hurricane Lee is going to do in the Atlantic. It’s an early September tradition.
And, speaking of September traditions, we will mark the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on Monday. Has it really been 22 years?
