City Reshuffles Re-Entry Zones

Monday, January 02, 2006
By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter

ORANGE BEACH -- A new hurricane re-entry map that municipal leaders hope will help residents of less-damaged areas return home more quickly after storms is likely to be approved by the City Council on Tuesday .

In some cases, zones were split up -- such as the one that runs along the beach -- and others were added to reflect newly developed or annexed tracts. The new map includes 15 zones, up from eight.

"I think it will alleviate a lot of the problems we had last time," Mayor Steve Russo said. "I think we have each area defined enough so we can be very selective about what zones come back."

Take, for example, the Beaver Creek subdivision, which sits on the south side of Canal Road just east of the city's border. That newer subdivision, built after the last re-entry maps were drawn, is served by a power substation situated in the Craft Farms area of Gulf Shores north of the Intracoastal Waterway and had electricity restored very soon after Hurricane Ivan struck in September 2004, City Administrator Jeff Moon said at the council's work session last week.

But Moon said city officials had no way to let Beaver Creek residents back in without also permitting those who lived in the Oak Ridge area behind City Hall, a hard-hit area of mostly trailers, to return because they were in the same re-entry zone.

"They may be able to have power before anyone else so that's why we wanted to give them their very own zone," Moon said. "We tried to take the lessons we learned after Ivan about the re-entry and the problems we had coming up with a common-sense, practical approach to fixing the problems."

In the case of Beaver Creak and Oak Ridge, formerly of Zone 12, the solution called for a split. The area is now comprised of:

Zone 14, which includes Oak Ridge and City Hall.

Zone 15, which stretches along the south side of Canal Road from Alabama 161 to the Foley Beach Express.

Zone 16, which is made up mostly of Beaver Creek and undeveloped land at the city's edge.

Also getting split is the former Zone 9, which runs along Alabama 182 between the Gulf State Park and Perdido Pass. Under the new map, that area will become Zone 10, which is the north side of the beach highway between the state park and Alabama 161 and includes both of the city's supermarkets as well as the Village of Tannin and Windward Lakes subdivisions. The Gulf-front and property north of Alabama 182 that sits west of Alabama 161 is Zone 11 on the new map.

After Ivan, Moon said, "we probably could have gotten the north side of the road back in sooner rather than later, but they were all part of the same zone so we didn't have a way to distinguish."

According to the new map, the former Zone 14, which runs along Canal Road, will also be halved at Wilson Boulevard. Property west of Wilson Boulevard will become Zone 18 and that to the east will be Zone 19.

"We decided to do that," Moon said, "because we thought it was a good dividing point because of damage patterns -- 19 being a little more exposed than 18."

Other zones south of the Intracoastal Waterway retained their boundaries, but their numbers have changed. According to the new map:

Perdido Key becomes Zone 12.

Ono Island is Zone 24.

The north half of Bear Point, defined as property east of Sampson Avenue and north of Canal Road, is Zone 20.

Zone 21 is the southern half of Bear Point, which is also bound by Sampson Avenue and Canal Road.

The neighborhoods east of Alabama 161, including those along Terry Cove Drive, Marina Road, and Cotton Bayou Drive, are in Zone 13.

The north side of Canal Road between Alabama 161 and the western city limit.

"We're reasonably confident we've got everyone where they need to be," Moon said. "We've reviewed this at the staff level, with the police chief, fire chief, public works director, everyone sitting down talking about access points and where we can turn people around."

In addition to these changes, Orange Beach is adding two zones north of the Intracoastal Waterway, where property has come into the city over the past six years.

Property along the Foley Beach Express toll bridge, including the Riverwalk Orange Beach development, becomes Zone 22. Sapling Point and the undeveloped acreage along Ingraham's Bayou and in the Josephine area brought into the city by the David Lawrenz family becomes Zone 23.

The evacuation plan covers not only hurricanes, but disasters such as chemical spills, which could require tracts along the Intracoastal Waterway -- an industrial shipping channel -- to evacuate, Moon said.

Besides the added zones, the reshuffling of numbers was necessary because Gulf Shores, which formerly used numbers 1 through 8, needed to create an additional zone, Moon said. So Zone 9 was dropped by Orange Beach so it could be assigned to an area in Gulf Shores.

The revised Gulf Shores re-entry map was not available.

Once the Orange Beach City Council adopts the new map, re-entry zone stickers will be ordered and distributed to residents. Then, Moon said, city officials will draft new re-entry policies, particularly as they pertain to businesses, contractors and property management companies.

City Attorney Larry Sutley recommended that a provision requiring businesses that handle hazardous materials, such as gasoline, to have an employee close by after a disaster to tend to any problems. In the hours after Ivan, a leak at Sportsman Marina caused about 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel to spill into Terry Cove, Sutley said.

Russo said in an interview that he would like to see such a provision. He said that after Ivan a similar mishap would have occurred at Orange Beach Marina, where boats filled with gas and oil were sinking, had a marina employee not been close by and able to correct the problem.