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Manatee County reviews 2024 storm impacts and readiness steps for 2025 hurricane season
Summary
Public safety staff summarized the 2024 storm sequence — Hurricane Debbie, then Helene and Milton — described $56 million in estimated damage from Debbie, large debris volumes, and long recovery operations. County emergency management outlined technology upgrades, incident management team use, and preparedness outreach for 2025.
Manatee County Director of Public Safety Jody Fisk briefed commissioners and city officials on the county’s storm response and preparedness work following the 2024 season and ahead of 2025.
Fisk summarized the 2024 sequence: Hurricane Debbie in August produced significant flooding and an estimated $56 million in residential and business damage; Hurricane Helene on Sept. 26 generated an approximately 8–8.5-foot storm surge plus heavy rain; Hurricane Milton made landfall in Manatee County within weeks and produced significant wind damage.
“The estimated damage for Debbie between residential and business was about $56,000,000,” Fisk said. She told the joint meeting the back-to-back nature of Helene and Milton made response and recovery unusually taxing and that federal and state liaisons helped open disaster recovery centers for a high volume of applicants.
Fisk reported the county completed state- and FEMA-eligible debris collection within 180 days, while acknowledging isolated pockets of remaining debris. She described deployments of incident management teams (IMTs) from other jurisdictions to supplement local staffing during extended operations.
For 2025 the county has increased preparedness actions: more than 60 presentations to homeowners and community groups, expanded CERT training, ongoing ditch and waterway clearance, and an updated technology platform (Peregrine) to aggregate multiple county GIS layers and damage-assessment feeds for real-time EOC dashboards.
Fisk listed mitigation-ready missions (e.g., Tiger Dams) and said the county will continue its posture of planning one category-higher than forecasted storms as a conservative approach. She also urged municipalities to station an authorized decision-maker at the county EOC during major events so cities can channel state mission requests through the county quickly.
No county policy changes were adopted at the meeting; Fisk invited municipal partners to request incident-management support or other assistance early in a response to avoid staff exhaustion and to shorten recovery timelines.
