News Headlines 10-7-24
In case you couldn’t tell by the absence of bottled water at the grocery store, there’s another tropical cyclone in the neighborhood. That low pressure system in the gulf that almost everyone wrote off as only a rain event turned into a depression, then a Tropical Storm Saturday, and a Hurricane yesterday. It’s expected to be a Category Three storm when it makes landfall Wednesday evening near Bradenton, then goes across the state exiting north of Cape Canaveral late Wednesday night. If that path holds, the eye may pass just north of Highlands County with a better than 50/50 chance of seeing Tropical Storm force winds over a good part of the area.
The Highlands County Board will hold a special emergency meeting at 2pm today for commissioners to consider a local state of emergency. School Board officials say they’ll make an announcement this afternoon once final decisions are made about agency closures, school closures, and the school schedule for the remainder of the week.
County Emergency Management is handing out sandbags – empty bags are being provided at the Road and Bridge office on George Blvd, the Avon Park Road and Bridge office on East Winthrop Street, and in Lake Placid at the Road and Bridge office on County Road 621. Sand for bags you already have is available just north of the Emergency Operations Center on George Boulevard, the intersection of Old Bombing Range Road and County Road 17A in Avon Park, and in Lake Placid at the Intersection of County Road 621, County Road 619 and Highlands Lake Drive.
And, if you’re worried about your trash, the County says Monday and Tuesday curbside collection services will happen as normal. The Landfill will be closed Wednesday, so Wednesday pickup WILL NOT happen. It is too early to know if the delay will be only one day.
A 15-year-old Avon Park High School student has been arrested and charged with making a school shooting threat. School officials were alerted by another student on Thursday after the suspect made statements during lunch that he was making plans to “shoot up the school.” No weapons were discovered at the suspect’s home, and detectives say there’s no evidence that there were any concrete plans. But for the second time in a week, both the schools and law enforcement take this stuff REAL seriously, and even in jest, talk like that IS going to get a kid arrested.