Retiring Emergency Management Chief Toner Looking Forward To Visiting With Friends, Grandkids

By Terry Schmida

Now that she’s decided to step down from her post, longtime Monroe County Emergency Management Director Irene Toner is looking forward to spending her time traveling to see her friends and family around the country.

Toner has served notice to her boss, County Administrator Roman Gastesi, that she will be leaving her position in June. The move will prompt a search for a new director, who must make the tough calls on when to evacuate – and return – the county’s 60,000 or so residents, and the many millions of tourists who visit the Keys annually.3

Since taking the job in 1998, Toner had guided the county through a number of stormy situations, the first being Hurricane Georges, which passed over Key West around noon on Sept. 24 of that year.

“That was the most challenging time, I think,” Toner said. “I was not from the Keys and it was the quickest on-the-job training that anyone could have received.”

Then there were the 2004 and ’05 hurricane seasons, which brought a record number of “blows” to Monroe County.

“Those were a very tough couple of years, with lots of evacuations,” Toner said. “But we got through it. Sometimes the decisions I had to make were difficult and not popular, but this position is all about public safely. No one got hurt, and I think that after time people have come to understand why we do what we have to do.”

While the security of residents is always paramount to Toner, she is also pleased with the strides made in communicating with area businesses, and especially the tourist industry, regarding what must be done and when.

“With hurricanes, it’s always the tourists that have to be evacuated first,” she said. “Nowadays, the leaders of the tourist industry know why the calls are made. We have also changed some of the decision making, but making the right call at the right time will always be the most challenging part of this job.”

As tough as her job has been personally at times, Toner is quick to assign high praise to the people who have helped her most during her tenure.

“From June 1 to Nov. 30, my very best friends have been the people at the Key West Weather Station,” she said. “Because it’s been them that I have relied upon to make the decisions that I have had to make, and they are always at the top of their game and have never failed me.”

Based in Key Largo, where her husband commutes to work at the Turkey Point power station, Toner plans to enjoy her retirement visiting with her grandchildren in Missouri, as well as the many friends she “couldn’t make enough time for” while on the job.

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