Key West Curfew Imposed

This past summer I got a phone call from a customer who lives up north in a tourist town. She said her business was decimated by the pandemic shut down. She told me she thought it was a hoax. She did not know anyone who had caught it or died. I told her it was real - that my niece died of it in May and that a friend from the Midwest passed that same week. She questioned me to ask if I was serious. I was, I said. 

Living in Key West during the lock down brought back memories of old Key West before the huge surege in tourism in the mid 1990s. I remember driving south on Simonton Street around 4:00 PM one day. There was not one car from Truman where I turned east until I neared Reynolds Street. That's about ten blocks or so. The tourists returned and so did the golf carts, motor scooters, and Conch Trains and Trolley Cars. I remember driving down Duval Street where I observed more tourists not wearing masks than those who wore them even though mask wearing is required to enter any business. 

Because the Covid 19 pandemic is raging out of control across the country and especially in Florida, the City of Key West adopted an emergency directive for a curfew in order to avoid a public health emergency during the New Year's holiday.

The directive reads: “Commencing on Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 10 p.m. and terminating on Sunday, January 3, 2021, at 6:00 a.m., a curfew is hereby imposed for the City of Key West, effective from 10 p.m. each night through 6 a.m. the next morning. All non-essential businesses shall close on or before 10 p.m. each night. Persons shall be in their residences or lodging establishments no later than 10:30 p.m. each night. During the period of such curfew, no person shall make use of any street or sidewalk for any purpose, except police, fire rescue, first responder, medical, health care, media, and utility repair service personnel.”

 

The curfew will not apply to: people returning directly to their homes from work at essential establishments or going directly to work at essential establishments from their homes; people making deliveries from essential establishments; people walking their dogs within 250 feet of their residences; and those traveling to or from any religious service.