Miami-Dade, Broward issue new orders urging residents to stay home amid COVID-19
Broward County issued an emergency shelter-in-place order on Thursday in the face of pressure from city officials, urging all residents countywide to stay indoors except to conduct “essential” business. Hours later, Miami-Dade County followed suit with an order with similar language and the same effect: urging people to remain at home as much as possible without new rules governing when they could go outside.
The difference between the two counties’ orders was largely semantic. Broward County Administrator Bertha Henry called her measure the “Shelter-in-Place: Safer at Home Policy,” while Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez used the term “Safer at Home.” Gimenez criticized use of “shelter-in-place” orders for the coronavirus emergency, saying the term should be reserved when an active shooter, tornado or some other threat doesn’t allow people to go outside under any circumstances.
“Shelter in place is for short-term emergencies when people are in imminent danger,” Gimenez said during a video message posted Thursday afternoon. He said governments may still need to use the term during the coronavirus emergency, and that shelter in place “conveys the need to shelter right away until an all clear is issued.”
By contrast, shelter-in-place orders issued by Miami and other cities instruct residents to remain home as much possible but note they can continue going outside to shop, work, participate in recreational activities and visit businesses allowed to remain open during the emergency.
“We want people to act like they have the virus and stay home, except for essential services like the grocery store, pharmacies and take-out food counters,” Gimenez said.
In both Broward and Miami-Dade, the new measures “urge,” rather than command residents to stay home, and both say activities and jobs deemed essential by previous orders are exempt. The Miami-Dade version says “all residents and visitors are urged to remain in their homes other than to engage in essential activities.”
But in Broward, city managers from across the county agreed after the county measure was passed to enact stricter versions for their own cities that order, not urge, residents to stay inside.
According to Joseph Napoli, the city manager for Cooper City, “almost every city” in Broward is planning to adopt the language of a new template that was shared among the managers Friday.
“There is a collective decision to have something a little stronger,” Napoli said. “This will go a long way in assisting us in keeping people from congregating and doing non-essential business outside of their homes.”
In Miami-Dade, pressure had been building on Gimenez to go further in the wording of his orders, including from municipal leaders who have been enacting a patchwork of curfews and stay-at-home measures this week. In past comments, Gimenez complained that by using shelter-in-place language, cities would confuse residents into thinking stricter rules were in place if they didn’t pay attention to the broad exceptions allowed in the decrees.
The Miami-Dade League of Cities, a group representing the interests of city governments, backed the use of “safer-at-home,” said Richard Kuper, the league’s executive director. “We want to unite the cities with the county,” Kuper said. “That was the intent of the language.”
In his message, Gimenez also said he would not impose a countywide curfew to match measures issued by Miami and other cities. He said police haven’t asked for stricter rules, but that imposing a curfew would strain resources by requiring officers to spend time enforcing it.
His order issued Thursday became effective immediately.
In Broward, the Emergency Order will begin at 12:01 a.m. on Friday and encompass all of Broward County. While the county is advising everyone to stay inside, those who work at “essential” businesses can leave their homes to go to work.
Also, outdoor exercising is still allowed if it follows the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social distancing guidelines.
As of Thursday evening, there were 2,484 positive COVID-19 cases in Florida, the Florida Department of Health said. Of those cases, 505 are located in Broward — more than any county except Miami-Dade, which has 654 cases.
“Essential businesses” include grocery stores and farmers’ markets, gas stations and marine fueling stations, car dealerships, hardware stores, contractors, first responders, laundromats and restaurants.
City officials in Broward had been pushing Henry to take the lead in South Florida and enact a countywide directive for residents to shelter in place.
On a phone call with Henry on Wednesday, city managers from across the county voiced their desire for the county to implement the order, rather than having each city implement its own.
After the call, the city managers, acting as the Broward County City Managers Association, sent a letter to Henry saying they “implore” her to immediately issue a countywide “Safer at Home” order.
“The difference between flattening the curve and hospital overload depends on sheltering in place now,” read the letter from Pompano Beach City Manager Greg Harrison, the president of the managers’ group. “It is our greatest chance to have the least number of people infected and prevent stretching our public health resources way beyond their capacity.”
In a separate document, the managers indicated that officials in at least 25 of 31 municipalities in the county would support the move.
“The general feeling among the municipalities is it’s really not effective if you’re just gonna do it municipality by municipality. You have to do it as a county,” Napoli said Thursday, before the city managers’ group reconvened and agreed to pass their own stricter measures.
Napoli acknowledged that such an order might be hard to enforce, but he said it would make it easier to educate the public if the message is the same across municipalities.
“If it’s countywide, it’s much easier to educate people,” he said.
Napoli said Wednesday that county officials had indicated that they prefer to issue any shelter-in-place orders in conjunction with Miami-Dade County. Broward followed Miami-Dade’s lead in ordering the closure of all “non-essential” businesses on Sunday after Miami-Dade had already done so last Thursday.
But in this case, Broward took a step that Gimenez at that point had declined to take.
Staff writer Devoun Cetoute also contributed to this report
This story was updated with new developments Friday.
This story was originally published March 26, 2020 at 3:41 PM.
%20Cropped%20(2).jpg)