St. Lucie County works year-round to prepare for severe weather.

The Traffic Section of the Road and Bridge Division has been upgrading signals at 13 intersections with backup batteries this year. Robert Andrejcak, Traffic Operations Superintendent, says this will help keep them operational following an outage.

Following impacts from Hurricane Milton in 2024, County staff restored power to intersection traffic signals by deploying and maintaining generators at key intersections. It was a herculean effort, with employees across multiple disciplines stepping up to assist. They not only delivered and installed the generators at various intersections, but they had to secure and refuel them.

The new battery backups will help ease that burden.

Funding from the 2018 voter-approved half-cent infrastructure sales tax helped make these upgrades possible.

Other preparations have been under way, as well. With a background in information technology, Andrejcak collaborated with the County GIS team to help organize and display data.

“I like data,” he said. “The more quality data you have, the better decisions can be made.”

Their efforts have resulted in a pair of digital maps to improve response times and resource management.

One plots the locations of County-maintained traffic signals. Staff can update the map to identify outages and note when they’ve been restored. In addition to daily use, Andrejcak says this will be an asset in the Emergency Operations Center when needed following a severe weather event.

“If you know where the problem is, you know what you need to do,” he said.

Another map shows where road detour signage, barricades, and other traffic assets have been deployed. This not only has year-round utility but will quickly show staff where to secure or retrieve resources ahead of severe weather.

Storms can be unpredictable, but preparations like these are vital to keeping St. Lucie County safe before, during, and after a hurricane strikes.

How can you prepare? Floridadisaster.org has a “Disaster Supply Kit Checklist” and more to help you and your family be ready. Visit the St. Lucie County Emergency Preparedness Portal for additional information and local resources.