Hurricanes and the Safe Digging Process

When a hurricane watch is issued for Central Florida or Lake, Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Volusia counties. Sunshine 811 is available to take tickets and extraordinary circumstance declarations by phone.

When a hurricane warning is issued for Central Florida or Lake, Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Volusia counties. Sunshine 811 will not be able to take excavator tickets by phone or process extraordinary circumstance declarations for our members.

Internet Ticket Entry is available to complete single address tickets and tickets for more complicated dig sites.

Sunshine 811 will resume normal operations the first business day after the storm has passed and local authorities say it’s safe to travel.

We will evaluate whether conditions call for extended or weekend hours to assist our members with storm restoration efforts.

Members that may be affected by a hurricane should declare extraordinary circumstances before a hurricane warning is issued for Volusia County. This lets excavators know that you may not be able to locate your facilities in the legal timeframe.

Excavators are required to verify all utility responses. When a utility declares extraordinary circumstances, the system automatically responds to your ticket with the 3T code: Unmarked: Extraordinary circumstances per s.556.105(8)(a), F.S. exist; call utility/operator provider for this location.

To see who has declared, visit our Declarations Page.

Extraordinary circumstances is a precautionary measure for the utility companies. They may still be able to locate, mark and update their positive responses.

Excavators should continue to follow normal procedures and avoid any digging until all utilities have cleared, located and marked their facilities, or the legal timeframe has expired (whichever occurs first).

There is no time limit on extraordinary circumstances, however recent changes require the member to provide a date when they expect to be back to normal.

If there is no response, treat it the same as a non-response. In that case, you should try contacting the member utility directly using the information on your ticket.

556.105(6)(a) states “…the excavator may proceed with the excavation, if the excavator does so with reasonable care and if detection equipment or other acceptable means to locate underground facilities are used.” You may want to consider hiring a private locate company to locate and mark your job site. There are a number of Sunshine 811 associate member companies that do private locating.

Florida’s hundreds of miles of coastline make it likely to be in the path of a hurricane at some point during the season.

When a hurricane approaches Florida and does not affect Central Florida, Sunshine 811 will continue taking calls from its members and excavators.

In some instances, we may even be open extended hours and weekends to help with recovery efforts.

Underground facilities can be damaged after the storm has passed when homeowners and professionals begin cleaning up and fixing fallen trees, broken fences and other damages hurricanes leave behind.

Underground facilities can pose a real danger after a storm. Please use the elements in this toolkit to educate your customers and residents of precautions to take when cleaning up after a hurricane or storm. Download the Sunshine 811 After the Storm toolkit. This toolkit contains helpful materials to remind those cleaning up following a storm that they must contact 811 before any project that requires digging or disturbing the ground, including removing downed trees.