Hillsborough and Pinellas evacuation zones — and what the alarm should do
Hillsborough and Pinellas publish lettered evacuation zones, typically A through E. Zone A goes first: barrier islands, some waterfront, some river and bay pockets. The alarm does not change your zone. It changes what happens at the house after you leave.
Look up your exact address on the county map before June. Do not guess from a neighbor’s street. Davis Islands, Apollo Beach, Madeira Beach, and some Safety Harbor lots are not the same as a Brandon two-story two miles inland.
Two lists
County zone tells you when to go. Follow emergency management, not social media.
ADT call list tells the monitoring center who to try if a door opens or smoke trips. If everyone in the family is in the same car on I-75, add someone who stayed or someone inland.
What to do when your zone is called
- Load people and pets.
- Arm Away from the ADT app once you are in the car. Do not walk back in to set the keypad.
- Leave. The system watches the house. It does not replace leaving.
Cellular backup is how the house still talks to ADT if FPL is out. A doorbell you planned to watch from a shelter often fails when the tower is busy.
After you return
If something opened or broke, you want a record and a call history, not a surprise. If the panel is in trouble, call (813) 212-9757 before you pull it off the wall.
How to prepare in May
Call and say you want the account ready for hurricane season. Confirm the app login, the call list, and cellular backup. If you do not have a system yet, that is the month to install — not the week the cone covers the bay.
FAQ
Does ADT tell me when to evacuate?
No. The county does. ADT responds to alarm events at the house.
I am in Pasco. Do I use the same maps?
Pasco has its own emergency management. Look up that county’s guidance. We still take the install order on the 813 line.
SafeStreets installs. ADT monitors 24/7.
Where to look up your zone
Use the official Hillsborough or Pinellas emergency-management site and type the address. Do not use a screenshot from 2019. Zones get refined. Save a PDF in your go-bag.
Pets
Know which shelters take pets. Load them first. Arm second. A panicked return trip for a cat is how people get stuck on a closed causeway. The alarm can wait sixty seconds. The cat cannot.
Special needs and 55+
If someone in the house needs extra time to evacuate, plan that in May. Put a second local name on the ADT list. Life-safety sensors still matter if a caregiver stays behind.
Re-entry
Some islands and low streets have delayed re-entry. Keep the system armed until you are actually home. Then disarm, walk, and call us if something is in trouble.
Questions? Call Tampa Home Security Dealer at (813) 212-9757. SafeStreets installs. ADT monitors 24/7. English or Spanish. Offers are for homeowners. Early termination fees apply on promotional agreements.
How to read the official map without guessing
Hillsborough and Pinellas both publish lettered evacuation zones based mainly on storm surge, not on how hard the wind might blow on your street. The map is a planning tool. It is not a neighbor’s group text. Open the official county emergency-management site, not a screenshot someone posted in 2019. Zones get refined. A pocket that was C can be recoded. Treat last year’s printout as a draft until you look it up again.
The alarm does not appear on that map. ADT does not assign your letter. The county does. Our job is what the system does after you lock the door and drive.
Type the full address, then save a PDF
Type the house number, street, and city the way the property appraiser lists them. Do not type only the subdivision name. Do not type a nearby shopping center. Unit numbers matter on Davis Islands, in some South Tampa duplexes, and in Pinellas condos. If the tool accepts a folio or parcel number, that is even cleaner.
When the result appears, save a PDF or a clear screenshot to your phone and print one page for the go-bag. Cell networks get slow the week a cone covers the bay. You do not want to discover that the county site is overloaded while you are deciding whether to take the Howard Frankland or I-75. Put the letter on paper next to the ADT call-list names.
How zone logic usually works — without assigning your house a letter
In broad terms, barrier islands and some open-water waterfront leave first. Madeira Beach, Treasure Island, Sand Key, and similar gulf streets are not in the same conversation as a two-story off Lumsden. Some bay and river pockets — parts of Davis Islands, some Apollo Beach lots, some Safety Harbor and Oldsmar waterfront — also sit in earlier letters than a house two miles inland. That is surge logic. It is not a property-value ranking.
Inland Brandon, Bloomingdale, Wesley Chapel, Lutz, and much of Carrollwood often sit in later letters or outside the surge sequence the county uses for waterfront. “Often” is not your address. A drainage canal, a pond, or a river bend can change a block. Always look up the exact house. Never copy a neighbor’s letter from memory.
Barrier islands and waterfront first, inland later — still look it up
If you live on the sand or on a lot that sees open water, plan as if you will leave earlier than your inland office. That means the ADT account has to be ready earlier too. App login, call list, cellular backup, and a code you can use from the car are May jobs, not the morning the county opens shelters.
If you live inland in 33511 or 33618, do not mock the map because your street has never had salt water in the yard. The county is not asking your opinion. If your letter is later, you may still lose power and you may still want the house armed if you leave for work closures or family inland. The letter tells you when to go. It does not tell you to leave the system off.
The bridges you cannot count on
Four names matter when Tampa Bay empties: the Howard Frankland (I-275), Gandy Boulevard, the Sunshine Skyway, and the Courtney Campbell Causeway (S.R. 60). Any of them can jam, close, or go to restricted flow. People who treat “we will just hop over to Pinellas” as a plan discover those four words are not a plan.
Arm the house before you sit in that traffic. Do not leave a slider unlocked because you thought you would be back by dinner. If your job is in South Tampa and your house is in Clearwater, or the reverse, decide in May which side you will stay on if the bridges become parking lots. Put a person on that side on the ADT call list.
Arm from the car, not from the kitchen
Load people and pets. Lock the sliders. Close the garage. Get in the car. Arm Away from the ADT app once the last door is shut. Walking back in “to hit the keypad” is how families lose twenty minutes and how a door gets left unlatched.
Traditional plans without the app make this harder. If you are in an earlier zone and you still want keypad-only, someone has to arm before the car is loaded, which is the wrong order when a cat is under a bed. Remote and Video plans exist partly for this morning. If you do not have the app and you live in a waterfront letter, say so on the quote call.
If the whole family is on I-75
ADT needs a number that will pick up. If every adult is in the same Expedition pointed at Gainesville or Atlanta, a single cell on the call list is a single point of failure. Add someone who stayed in Tampa Bay, a neighbor who is riding it out inland, or a relative already in Orlando or Lakeland. Tell that person they may get a call from an ADT operator. Write their name on the paper in the go-bag.
Update the list when someone changes phones. A disconnected number from 2022 is how an opening at the house turns into a voicemail no one hears. If you have a Remote or Video plan, confirm the app notifications are on for at least two phones before you merge onto I-75.
Cellular backup when the block is already dark
FPL and the cable node often leave together. A doorbell you planned to watch from a shelter cot will not load. A professionally installed ADT system with a cellular communicator and a panel battery is built to send an alarm event anyway. Ask for cellular backup and battery backup by those words on (813) 212-9757 before the season, not during the press conference.
Cellular is not a magic tower that never congests. It is a better path than a router that is already dead. Door and smoke signals are small. Video is not. Plan to let monitoring work and treat live video as a bonus if the network is kind.
Shelter, hotel, or inland family
Public shelters in Hillsborough and Pinellas open when emergency management says they will. Hotels in Orlando, Ocala, and inland I-75 towns fill early. Family in Lakeland or Gainesville is a third option. Each one is a different phone environment. Shelter Wi-Fi is poor. Hotel Wi-Fi is shared. A cousin’s house may have power and still have a full cell sector.
Download insurance cards, ID images, and the ADT login before you leave. Do not count on streaming the driveway from a gymnasium. Arm the house. Let U.S. monitoring centers take the signals. Answer if they call. If you miss the call, the backup name on the list should pick up.
Pets on the same timeline as people
Know which public shelters take animals and which hotels will still accept a crate in a storm week. Load pets before you argue about the keypad. A return trip across a closing causeway for a cat is how people get stuck. The system can wait one minute while the carrier goes in the car. It cannot replace a pet you left behind.
If a neighbor has agreed to take a dog inland, that neighbor is a candidate for the ADT call list. Give them a unique code only if they also have a key and a reason to enter. Do not hand out the master code because someone is watching a pet two streets over.
What the alarm does in an early zone versus inland
In an early letter — islands and some waterfront — the house will likely sit empty, dark, and possibly wet. The useful system is one that can still report an opening or a smoke event over cellular, with a call list that is already on the road. Cameras are a luxury if the node is down. Shutters are wind protection. They are not contacts.
Inland, you may stay. Use Stay if you are sleeping there and you still want the perimeter on. Use Away if you leave for a family house even though your letter was not called. The equipment does not change with the letter. Your habits do. A Brandon two-story that is empty because school closed still needs the slider armed.
A May calendar for the ADT account
Week one of May: log into the app on every phone that should have it. Change the password if a former roommate still has it. Week two: print the call list and add the inland name. Week three: test Stay and Away. If a zone beeps that you do not understand, call before June 1. Week four: confirm cellular and battery on the account by name. Replace smoke batteries if they are due.
If you do not have a system yet, May is the month to install. The week the cone covers the bay is a bad week to discover the leftover keypad is dead. Promotional new-customer packages commonly start around $36.99 a month with a $99 install. Offers are for homeowners. Early termination fees apply. You hear the agreement length on the call.
The first week after the storm
Come home when officials say re-entry is open. Some islands and low streets wait longer than inland Brandon. Keep the system armed until you are actually in the driveway. Then disarm, walk the house, and look at the keypad. If a slider failed, a door was forced, or a window is gone, you want the event history, not a guess.
If the panel is in trouble, call (813) 212-9757 before you pull it off the wall. A SafeStreets technician can test after an outage. If you are replacing glass, count the openings on the house that exists now. New sliders need new alignment for the contacts.
If you live on the Pasco or Manatee edge
Wesley Chapel, Lutz, and some New Tampa streets sit near the Pasco line. Apollo Beach and the southern waterfront sit near Manatee even when the mail says Hillsborough. Pasco and Manatee publish their own maps and their own orders. Do not use a Hillsborough screenshot for a Pasco address. Do not use a Pinellas letter for a Manatee condo.
We still take the install order on the 813 line. The monitoring is still ADT. The evacuation letter is still the county you legally live in. Look up that county. Save that PDF.
Zone questions that are not on the county FAQ
Can I stay if I have a monitored alarm?
The alarm is not a reason to ignore a mandatory order. It watches an empty house. It does not make a surge zone safe.
Should I disarm so first responders can get in?
No. Leave it armed Away. If someone with a lawful reason needs to enter, that is a later problem. An unlocked, disarmed house helps the wrong people first.
What if we split up — kids at a shelter, adults at a hotel?
Put both locations’ working numbers on the call list. Decide in advance who is allowed to cancel an alarm with a passcode. Two adults who cannot reach each other should not both guess.
Do shutters replace contacts?
No. Shutters are for wind. Contacts are for openings. Close the shutters, then arm the glass behind them.
Call Tampa Home Security Dealer at (813) 212-9757 in May, not during the press conference. SafeStreets installs. ADT monitors 24/7.