Tate Aggies Reschedule Homecoming
September 12, 2017
The Tate Aggies have rescheduled their “Music Fest” Homecoming to next week.
The Aggies will face Milton on Friday night, September 22 in their homecoming game.
There will be no dress up days this week, and the Homecoming Dance has been moved to Saturday, September 23.
Homecoming Events
The Pep Rally will be Friday, September 22 at 8:50 a.m. with float parade, games and a skit by a special guest. The parade will be Friday, September 22 at 6 p.m. with floats, candy, Senior Court parade, underclassmen Homecoming Court presentation and, for the first year, the Showband of the South.
The game, Tate versus the Milton Panthers, will kickoff at 7 p.m. Tickets will be $5 at lunches, $7 at the gate. The Homecoming Queen will be crowned at halftime.
The Homecoming Dance will be Saturday, September 23 at 8 p.m. Tickets are on sale during lunches, $20 per student. Forms for non-Aggies are located outside room 422.
Theme Days
- Monday, Sept. 18 – Mathlete vs. Athlete
- Tuesday, Sept. 19 — Tacky Tourist Tuesday
- Wednesday, Sept. 20 — Woodstock Wednesday
- Thursday, Sept. 21 — Music Fest Character Day
- Friday, Sept. 22 — Battle of the Classes Class Color Day: 12 – Blue, 11th – Red, 10th – White, 9th – Pink
Pictured: Gloria Jones was crowned homecoming queen last year at Tate High School. NorthEscambia.com file photo.
Winds Down Tree Across Roadway
September 12, 2017
The outskirts of Tropical Storm Irma brought a little rain and gusty winds to North Escambia on Monday, with no damage reported. About 8:55 Monday night, a large pine tree fell across and blocked North Pine Barren Road near Breastworks Road near Bratt. Firefighters from the Walnut Hill Station of Escambia Fire Rescue were able to quickly remove the tree from the roadway. NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
Century Approves Increased Budget, Sets Tax Rate
September 12, 2017
The Century Town Council gave preliminary approval Monday night to a $4.6 million budget — an increase of 23 percent over the last fiscal year.
The budget is $4,609,519, up from $3,746,888.36 last fiscal year.
The council also approved a tentative rollback millage rate of .9204, which is no increase over last year.
Before becoming final, the 2017-2018 Century budget faces another public hearing on Monday, September 18 at 6:50 p.m., just prior to a regular council meeting at 7:00.
Escambia BOCC Weekly Meeting Schedule
September 12, 2017
Here is a schedule of Escambia County public meetings this week:
Tuesday
Environmental Enforcement Special Magistrate – 1:30 p.m., Escambia County Central Office Complex, 3363 West Park Place
Merit System Protection Board — Canceled
1st Budget Public Hearing – 5:31 p.m., Ernie Lee Magaha Government Building, 221 Palafox Place
Wednesday
Development Review Committee – 1:30 p.m., Escambia County Central Office Complex, 3363 West Park Place (Agenda)
Thursday
Committee of the Whole – 9 a.m., Ernie Lee Magaha Government Building, 221 Palafox Place
Saturday
Escambia Cares Community Resource Expo – 11 a.m. – 2 p.m., Brownsville Community Center, 3200 W. De Soto Street
NorthEscambia.com photo.
Gulf Power Crews Deploy To Restore Power After Irma
September 12, 2017
As Tropical Storm Irma pushed out of Northwest Florida Monday, Gulf Power crews continued to respond to customer outages and planned to join many other utilities to deploy crews to help rebuild and restore power to those areas in the southeast hardest hit by the massive storm.
The 100-person storm team was set to depart Tuesday morning.
“Irma proved to be a powerful and deadly storm,” said Jeff Rogers, Gulf Power spokesperson. “Now that we have enough Gulf Power crews on the ground in the Bay County area to quickly restore power, our crews are ready to join the massive coordinated effort focused on rebuilding the electric grid and restoring power and hope to those hardest hit areas.”
Rogers added that Gulf Power sent additional lineworkers from the western end of the company’s service area to Bay County to ensure there were enough resources to get the lights back on quickly and safely for Gulf Power’s customers.
“Restoring power to our Gulf Power customers is our priority. With plenty of resources on the ground in Bay County, we’re prepared to send crews to help those areas so devastated by Irma,” said Rogers. “It’s what we do — we’re there for our neighbors in their time of need and when we need them — they send the troops to us.”
Gulf Power has a strong history of restoring power — both at home and away assisting other utilities. Crews have deployed more than 36 times since 2008 to help other energy companies restore power to their customers. This deployment will be different, as much of the restoration effort will require total rebuilding of power grid systems.
“Our crews are ready and anxious to help our friends to the southeast. Many remember what it was like after Hurricane Ivan in 2004, and they are anxious to restore power and hope to those that have lost so much.”
Recently, in 2016, Gulf Power responded to the City of Tallahassee and Georgia Power following Hurricane Hermine’s landfall. A month later, Gulf Power storm teams responded rapidly to calls for aid from Florida Public Utilities and Georgia Power, assisting with recovery operations following Hurricane Matthew. For these efforts, Gulf Power was awarded the Edison Electric Institute Assistance Award or its extraordinary work assisting in power restoration efforts in a neighboring or nearby electric company.
“Gulf Power is part of a mutual assistance network consisting of dozens of utilities. As part of this partnership, Gulf Power line crews provide assistance to other utilities when service to their customers is interrupted due to severe weather, and have traveled as far away as New York to assist with restoration following Superstorm Sandy,” said Rogers.
Pictured: Gulf Power crews roll out of their Pine Forest Road office Tuesday morning for Tampa. Photo for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Scott Tours Impacts of Hurricane Irma
September 12, 2017
Gov. Rick Scott got an aerial view Monday morning of damage to Florida from Hurricane Irma.
The governor left Pensacola and flew from Mobile to the Keys. Scott joined Vice Admiral Karl Schultz and members of the U.S. Coast Guard for aerial tour from a C-130. The governor flew along Florida’s West Coast and over the Florida Keys to assess damage from Hurricane Irma
Irma made its initial Florida landfall about 9 a.m. Sunday at Cudjoe Key — less than 30 miles northeast of Key West — with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph.
Pictured top: Gov. Rick Scott surveys Hurricane Irma damage from a Coast Guard C-130. Pictured below: Scott at the Coast Guard base in Mobile. Photos for NorthEcambia.com, click to enlarge.
Deadline Extended For Mass Transit Advisory Committee Applications
September 12, 2017
The Escambia County Board of County Commissioners is seeking Escambia County residents interested in volunteering to be considered for a vacancy on the Escambia County Mass Transit Advisory Committee, or MTAC.
Escambia residents interested in serving on the Escambia County Mass Transit Advisory Committee are asked to submit a resume and letter indicating their desire to serve on the Committee by close of business on Friday, Sept. 15. Resumes should be submitted to Judy Witterstaeter, Program Coordinator, Board of County Commissioners, P.O. box 1591, Pensacola, FL 32502, or emailed to jhwitter@myescambia.com.
Atmore Mobile Home Fire Blamed On Candles Used During Power Outage
September 12, 2017
A Monday night Atmore mobile home fire is being blamed on candles.
Firefighters responded to the mobile home fire on Old Ship Circle in Atmore just before 10 p.m. Monday. Everyone was out of the home and there were no injuries. The home was total loss.
Atmore Fire Chief Ronald Peebles said the fire was started by the unattended use of candles during a power outage. That power outage was the result of a motor vehicle accident a short time prior to the blaze.
The fire re-flashed shortly about 12:30 Tuesday afternoon.
An unrelated fire Monday night in Atmore claimed the life of an elderly woman. Click here to read more.
Pictured: Atmore firefighters extinguish a re-flash Monday afternoon at an Atmore mobile home. NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
Irma Could Cost ‘Billions Upon Billions’
September 12, 2017
Local curfews were in place throughout the state, much of the Florida Keys remained closed and millions of people continued to lack electricity as cleanup work expected to reach into the billions of dollars began Monday in the wake of deadly Hurricane Irma.
While businesses slowly reopen, the state is dealing with widespread flooding, from storm surges of 4 to 8 feet along both coasts to flash flooding in Northeast Florida.
Gov. Rick Scott, who flew over hard-hit areas Monday, said damage along the Southwest coast, where Irma made a second landfall Sunday, included roofs off homes, boats tossed, flooding and sand across roads. But overall, he said the conditions appeared “not as bad as we thought the storm surge would do.”
However, he depicted the destruction in the Keys, which experienced the first landfall, as “horrible.”
“There is devastation, and I just hope everybody survived,” Scott said during an afternoon press conference at the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Miami in Opa-locka.
Scott viewed the damage while flying on a U.S. Coast Guard C-130 plane Monday morning.
“I know for our entire state, but especially the Keys, it’s going to be a long road. There is a lot of damage,” Scott said. “I know everyone wants to get back to normal. I know everyone wants to get started, but you’ve got to be patient. We’ve got to get the first responders to the Keys. We’ve got to get water going again. We’ve got to get electricity going again. We’ve got to get sewers going again. It’s going to take a lot of time.”
At least four deaths have been tied to the storm, including a Hardee County sheriff’s deputy and a Florida Department of Corrections officer, who were involved in a car crash.
Scott declined to speculate on the potential for additional loss of life from the storm. He traveled across the state during the past week warning Floridians to evacuate from vulnerable areas, as Irma cut a deadly path through the Caribbean as a massive Category 5 storm with maximum sustained winds reaching 185 mph.
“I don’t want anybody to die, so I hoped everybody listened to what we were talking about. We’ll find out over time if people did or not,” Scott said. “You know the days run together, but I remember the morning when the hurricane was hitting, the roads were empty. So I think people did leave their homes and got off the roads.”
Scott also declined to speculate on the potential costs of the storm, saying the numbers will first be compiled by individual counties.
In requesting federal disaster relief Sunday, Scott said the state had already spent $75 million on Irma. President Donald Trump later approved the request.
Congressman Carlos Curbelo, a Republican whose district includes all of Monroe County and parts of southwest Miami-Dade, said it will cost “billions upon billions upon billions of dollars” to restore the Keys and South Florida.
Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Miami-Dade County, vowed to push federal lawmakers to provide funding for the relief efforts.
“We found it for Hurricane Harvey, we’re going to band together and find it for the residents who are survivors of Hurricane Irma,” Ros-Lehtinen said.
An initial estimate from Moody’s Analytics on Monday projected property destruction from Irma between $64 billion and $92 billion.
The storm, combined with Hurricane Harvey’s impact on Texas, could cause a further $20 billion to $30 billion hit to the nation’s economic output, lowering the third quarter gross domestic product estimate to 2.5 percent from 3 percent, according to Moody’s Analytics.
For Florida, the impacts will depend on demands placed on insurance companies and the levels of needed government funding, as well as how quickly Florida’s tourism industry can rebound. Also, Moody’s added that the fourth-quarter numbers could be boosted because of reconstruction from both storms.
State Senate Banking and Insurance Chairwoman Anitere Flores, a Miami Republican whose district also covers the Keys, said the state has to make sure state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp. has the funds to cover individual property-insurance claims, particularly from the Keys.
“We feel that because this storm was not as bad as it could have been, that Citizens will not have to go into actual assessment mode, and to assess people who are not Citizens property holders,” Flores said. “Citizens’ reserves are approximately $9 billion. So the question that we have to figure out in the next couple of days is of that, how many Citizens property holders were at a total loss.”
House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’ Lakes, has raised the possibility of a post-storm special session “should any recovery efforts require legislative authorization.”
As of Monday afternoon, 6.7 million homes and businesses were without power across Florida, according to the State Emergency Response Team.
Florida Power & Light, the largest utility in the state, reported 3.5 million of its 5 million customer accounts were out.
St. Petersburg-based Duke Energy, with about 1.8 customer accounts, was working to restore power to nearly 1.3 million customers.
Tampa Electric reported more than 300,000 accounts had been knocked offline.
More than 820,000 were without power in Miami-Dade County, 600,000 in Broward and 530,000 in Palm Beach County.
Nearly 430,000 homes and businesses were out in Pinellas County. More than 300,000 were out in both Orange and Lee counties. Collier, Duval, Brevard, Hillsborough, Pinellas and Volusia each had more than 200,000 homes and businesses in the dark.
FPL President and Chief Executive Officer Eric Silagy estimated Monday that up to 9 million people served by his company, 90 percent of its customers, have been impacted.
While up to 1 million accounts have been restored, some customers in harder hit areas may have to wait weeks for full restoration, Silagy said.
“We’ve actually had over 5 million outages across our territory,” Silagy said during a morning press conference. “That, frankly, is unprecedented. We’ve never had that many outages. I don’t think any utility in the country ever has. It is by far the largest in the history of our company.”
Meanwhile, all 7,935 members of the Florida Army and Air National Guard have been deployed, conducting search and rescue, law-enforcement support and humanitarian assistance.
The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and two amphibious ships, the USS Iwo Jima and USS New York, have been deployed to assist the state in search and rescue operations.
More than 200,000 people remained Monday afternoon in 585 shelters opened throughout the state.
The Florida Highway Patrol has started escorting utility convoys into areas without power, and Scott said the state law enforcement officers will do the same when the Port Tampa and Port Canaveral reopen and fuel trucks begin to travel.
by Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida
Gov. Scotts Visits Evacuees, Local Officials In Escambia County
September 11, 2017
Gov. Rick Scott met with Hurricane Irma evacuees and local emergency officials in Escambia County Sunday afternoon.
Scott flew into Pensacola and headed first to the Escambia County Emergency Operations Center to meet with local officials.
He also visited the Pensacola Bay Center which is temporary home to about 200 Irma evacuees.
“We will make it through this together,” Scott said while in Pensacola.
Pictured: Gov. Rick Scott and Pensacola Mayor Ashton Hayward visiting with evacuees and volunteers at the Pensacola Bay Center late Sunday afternoon. Photo for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
