Duval County has no evacuation orders but JTA will offer rides to emergency shelters

Mayor Donna Deegan and the Jacksonville Transportation Authority announced that specially marked buses will provide rides Tuesday for residents who want to stay at emergency shelters while Hurricane Idalia powers through Florida and delivers its heaviest dose of weather to Northeast Florida on Wednesday afternoon.

No evacuation orders are in place in Duval County, but officials encourage people living in low-lying areas or in manufactured homes to make plans for seeking shelter elsewhere if they are concerned.

JTA buses marked "Evacuation Shuttle" will take riders during regular bus hours Tuesday to seven shelters in different parts of the city. The city added a seventh shelter to the original six sites by opening Chaffee Trail Elementary School for the the Baldwin area that stands to face the biggest impact from Idalia.

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JTA also will have three designated pickup sports at the Beaches and another one at Mayport, plus a special route serving residents of the Ken Knight Drive neighborhood.

Deegan said residents should remain prepared for wind, rain, dangerous surf and the risk of tornados even though Idalia continued to shift to the west on its path toward landfall on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Deegan said at a Tuesday evening media briefing the westward shift is "good news for us" because Idalia will not pack as much punch in Duval County as far as wind speeds go.

"But we don't need to let our guards down because we're still going to have some strong winds" along with "some possibilities of flooding," she said.

"The track has shifted further west," said Alex Boothe, senior meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Jacksonville. "That doesn't put us out of the woods."

He said even though Duval County no longer falls within the cone that illustrates the possible direction Idalia will travel, strong tropical-force winds are possible here. The outlook for storm surge still is up to 3 feet so low-lying areas are most vulnerable. The bands of hurricane-driven weather also can generate tornadoes overnight as Idalia moves closer.

All lifeguards will be pulled off beaches at 5 p.m. Tuesday. Deegan said people should stay out of the ocean because there are a "lot of rip currents out there."

"Just don't do it," she said. "Do not near any downed power lines and don't walk or drive in standing water."

Idalia will make landfall around sunrise Wednesday in the Big Bend region of the state, potentially as a high-end Category 3 hurricane, Boothe said. Duval County residents will experience the brunt of the storm in a time frame starting in late morning around 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Wednesday and continuing through the afternoon until about 3 p.m.

JEA CEO Jay Stowe said at the agency's regular board meeting Tuesday morning that the agency still expects some customers to lose power because of the storm.

"It was bearing down on us worse yesterday," he said.

He said the track might bring less intense wind but "we're likely still to experience outages."

More: Tropical Storm Idalia: What you need to know in Duval County as storm approaches

For those who want to stay in emergency shelters, JTA is providing service Tuesday on its regular routes by using buses marked "Evacuation Shuttle." JTA will suspend regular bus service on Wednesday.

Another option for rides to shelters is to go to four designated pickup sites: Fletcher High School, 700 Seagate Ave. in Neptune Beach; Mayport Middle School, 2600 Mayport Road in Atlantic Beach; Baldwin Middle-High School, 291 Mills St., West in Baldwin; and Jacksonville Beach Elementary School, 315 S. 10th Street in Jacksonville Beach.

JTA also will provide a special route at Ken Knight Drive and Moncrief Road at bus stop 3991 to serve people living in the Ken Knight Drive neighborhood where homes have repeatedly flooded over the years. Those shuttles will run every 30 minutes to The Legends Center until weather conditions deteriorate. The shuttles will provide transportation back to the bus stop when the shelter closes.

JTA will suspend all of its bus service Wednesday.

The emergency shelters that opened Tuesday are located at these site in different parts of Jacksonville:

• The Legends Center (5130 Soutel Drive), open for general population.

• Chimney Lakes Elementary School (9353 Staples Mill Drive), open for general population and pet-friendly.

• Landmark Middle School (101 Kernan Blvd), open for general population and pet-friendly.

• Atlantic Coast High School (9735 R.G. Skinner Parkway), special needs only.

• Oceanway Elementary School (12555 Gillespie Ave.), open for general population.

• LaVilla School of the Arts (501 N. Davis St.), open specifically for homeless individuals.

• Chaffee Trail Elementary School – (11400 Sam Caruso Way), open for general population.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville Transportation Authority gives rides to shelters