Citizens Insurance policy holders are about to lose more coverage from the only insurer that will write policies in the Florida Keys.
Citizens, the state-run insurer of last resort, recently announced that it will be deleting some coverages for ancillary structures.
Almost any weekend when the weather is warm and the seas temperate, one can find anywhere from a few to hundreds of boats parked at shallow-water islands up and down the Keys.
The National Key Deer Refuge prescribed fire program will be instituting new pre-burn standards in the coming months after a planned 21-acre burn in September flamed out of control and scorched 100 acres on Big Pine Key.
The September 15 fire was supposed to burn a 21-acre unit south of Port Pine Heights on Key Deer Blvd. and north of Pine Heights Subdivision, never coming near either.
But the fire flamed out of control about 90 minutes after it was lit, running south along Key Deer Blvd. and nearly jumping into Pine Heights Subdivision.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service conducted in intra-agency review just days after the fire. That review said that weather anomalies and human error were to blame for the fire getting out of control and threatening the 42 homes in Pine Heights.
The report stated that relative humidity dropped precipitously from about 50 percent to less than 40 percent during the burn, and the wind increased from less than five miles per hour to over 12 miles per hour, pushing the fire southward beyond the original fire break line.
The report also stated that while personnel on the ground were certified to the proper levels, they lacked a great deal of experience in prescribed burns in pine rocklands, and few had ever worked together on any type of burn.
A nationwide environmental group called 350.org is traveling throughout South Florida urging local governments to stop studying the science behind projected sea level rise and begin to implement whatever local strategies they can to mitigate the coming rise in ocean waters.
Continue reading ‘Sea level rising to top of Monroe issue list’
Monroe County will not have a new sign ordinance in place by its self imposed deadline of Dec. 31.
A temporary allowance for the use of A-frame signs along US 1 is due to sunset on that date, but the Board of County Commissioners won’t act on new sign rules until its January meeting. And approval from the state is expected to take an additional 30 to 60 days.
Building height, density top list of area concerns in land use plan
The eventual implementation of a new community planning vision for the Lower Keys from Little Torch Key to Sugarloaf Key will probably include much of the status quo.
County planning staff and area residents have been working on the Liveable Communi-Keys plan for the area for more than four years. And residents are saying the same thing now they did when the process started.
Residents of the area have pulled no punches with county staff in asking that density of both residential and commercial development remain at least as low as it is today, and that intensity of uses, particularly commercial, remain no higher than it is now.
And, the residents also asked that current height restrictions remain in place.
County staff made yet another presentation of the draft LCP to residents recently.
“We updated the document to reflect existing conditions and tweaked the language to reflect more generic vision statements instead of policy directives,” said Mitch Harvey, county comprehensive plan manager.
When the LCP is completed, planners hope to have a guiding document against which further growth can be planned in the Lower Keys planning area.
“What the LCP will do is provide guidance to staff to plan consistency with the community vision laid out by the residents,” said Harvey.
During an annual inspection of the No Name Key Bridge last Friday, inspectors found what they termed a “serious condition” that led to the closing of a portion of the northbound lane.
County staff is still recommending that the temporary allowance for the use of A-frame signs along US 1 be discontinued.
But the latest proposal states that permitted A-frame signs, provided they meet established criteria, will be allowed to continue past the proposed sunset date of the new sign ordinance.
An interagency review committee found that both environmental and human conditions were partly to blame for the prescribed burn that flamed out of control Sept. 15 and charred 100 acres of the National Key Deer Refuge on Big Pine Key.
The fire also forced the evacuation of 42 homes in the Pine Heights subdivision, located south of the planned burn area and about midway between Eden Pines and Port Pine Heights down Key Deer Blvd.
In the committee’s executive summary of the report released late last month, the after-burn review was “conducted to examine the causal factors of the escape and identify recommendations to improve future prescribed fire planning and implementation.”
According to the official time line, the fire was ignited at 10:25 a.m. Sept. 15, nearly 90 minutes after originally planned due to wind conditions.
Just 90 minutes after that, officials report that the fire’s behavior changed along with the weather, and embers jumped as much as 100 feet over the planned end of the burn area.
Firefighters on scene cut fire breaks to promote a controlled back burn on the primary fire and at 4 p.m. evacuation of Pine Heights was ordered.
The report claims the wildfire was contained at 100 acres by 8 p.m. that evening.
The tiny Lower Keys striped mud turtle may soon join a host of other local animals as species requiring federal protection.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service last month released a list of 374 rare plants and animals, about a half dozen found in the Florida Keys, that could potentially be added to the list of endangered species protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, managed locally by the National Wildlife Refuges of the Florida Keys.
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