Key West The Newspaper

MARATHON – Emergency Management Director Irene Toner retired June 30, ending nearly two decades of service to Monroe County and 35 years in emergency management.

The Czechoslovakia native, who lived and worked in New York City and the Northeast, laughed recalling her introduction to the laidback Keys in the late 1990s. With Hurricane Georges barreling toward the island chain, an email was shown to her about a hurricane party.

“I thought it was a joke,” Toner said. But coworkers told her: “No Irene, this is normal. People in the Keys have hurricane parties as hurricanes approach.”

Toner was hired as the County’s Emergency Management Operations Manager. Only a few months later Hurricane Georges struck in 1998, leaving destruction in its wake. She remembers it took nearly a year to clean up all the debris piled up along U.S. 1.
She was promoted the next year to Emergency Management Director. During her tenure, Toner said she is proud that “nobody died under my watch.”

The toughest part of her job was deciding if and when to evacuate, knowing that evacuations adversely impact people’s lives and livelihoods.

“The timeliness is really important,” she said. “You don’t want to call it too early and jump the gun. You also have to be very careful not to call it too late, and put people’s lives in danger or jeopardy.”

Another difficult part of her job was convincing people to evacuate the island chain, whose unique geography and one main road adds to the challenge.

“You can replace your home, your TV, your furniture, but you can’t replace your mom, your dad, your kids,” she said. “The one time that you make the decision not to evacuate and we get hit with a severe storm and something happens to you or your family, you’ve got to ask yourself: ‘Would it be worth it?’ ”

Toner guided the Keys through the Atlantic Hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, when eight hurricanes hit Florida and the last major one, Wilma, flooded much of the Keys.

“We told people this was going to be a storm surge event and to evacuate, mainly out of the Lower Keys,” Toner said. “Less than 10 percent did.”

Thousands of cars were destroyed, leading to Monroe County negotiating a last-minute deal with a mainland bus company to provide service. Toner said the recovery from that storm was long and exhausting, lasting months.

While there have been a few storm scares since Wilma, including one evacuation, no major storms have struck the Keys in the last decade. But during this “calm,” Toner said Emergency Management has not been complacent. It has evaluated and revised protocols, provided training to first responders, County employees and the public, and held workshops and training exercises to maintain a “state of readiness.”

She hopes people also are not complacent, having their own hurricane preparation plans and supplies in place.

Toner received the Lifetime Achievement Award during the 30th Annual Governor’s Hurricane Conference. She said she has only one regret: “I was not able to convince people to get a dedicated EOC (Emergency Operations Center) built. An EOC has to be able to withstand up to Category 5 storms and we’re the only County that doesn’t’ have a dedicated EOC in the state.”

When a major storm approaches, a temporary EOC is put together at the Marathon Government Center, in the room where the Board of County Commissioners meet.

A new EOC is on the to-do list of the new Emergency Director Marty Senterfitt, who officially took over the position July 1.

Toner won’t be bored. She already has a busy summer planned with visits to see her kids and grandkids in Cape Coral and Missouri and her sister who she hasn’t seen in 32 years in Prague. “From June 1 to November 30 I haven’t been able to travel,” she said. “Now, I can.”