SARASOTA, Fla. (SNN) — Although it doesn’t look like Venice will be hit hard, the city’s Mayor, Nick Pachota, says they’d rather be safe than sorry.
“Our community center operation was shut down because we ran out of sand and sandbags. Here we’re still open. I’ve seen over the past couple of days, it looks like there were some pretty significant lines here, and we want everybody prepared. We want to be prepared and worst case scenario, if nothing happens here, we will have been ready, we won’t have needed it and will send our resources elsewhere to help those that do need it,” said Mayor Pachota.
People in the area are doing some last-minute preparing at nearby sand bag locations.
Julia Tuns is visiting from California and says she and her family were trying to escape California fires, just to end up in a hurricane.
“We were surprised that surges, right? We didn’t even know what that word meant until some neighbors told us that water can come up to your doors. There was water seeping into the front of our home and we didn’t realize the sand bags actually prevented a lot,” said Tuns.
Idalia is expected to intensify overnight. If you need last minute sand bags, you can fill as many as you’d like at 4571 State Road 776 in Venice.
