St. Petersburg Public Safety Guide

In St. Petersburg, 911 is for any situation where a life or property is in danger; short of that, the city and county publish separate lines for police business, storm planning, evacuation rides and street flooding.

Police headquarters sits at 1301 First Avenue North, main line (727) 893-7521 (SPPD). For general city questions during a storm, the city's storm page also gives its information line, 727-893-7111 (city storm page).

Four deeper St. Petersburg safety guides pick up from this table: the St. Petersburg emergency services guide (911, fire stations, alerts and shelters), the St. Petersburg hurricane evacuation zones guide (what the lettered zones mean and how surge sets them), the St. Petersburg flood zones guide (FEMA maps, insurance and the 49% rule) and the St. Petersburg sinkhole risk guide (state incident data and insurance law).

St. Petersburg Fire Rescue runs 14 fire companies out of 13 stations with a workforce of 389, including 357 sworn responders, covering about 300,000 people across 70 square miles.

SPFR provides fire and EMS service both inside and outside the St. Petersburg city limits, and its sworn crews work three rotating 24-hour shifts (St. Petersburg Fire Rescue). Each of the 13 stations is managed by a fire captain. The department's core services include fire operations, advanced life support EMS, emergency management and disaster planning, fire prevention and special operations.

ISO rates SPFR at Class 1, the best mark on a Public Protection Classification scale that runs to 10 and that many property insurers use when pricing fire coverage (SPFR). One number on the operations page is stale: it says that in 2018 SPFR answered more than 62,000 requests for emergency services, and its call totals table covers 2013 to 2018 only, ending at 62,178 calls in 2018, with no newer year posted there.

Station 12 in Shore Acres, built in 2003, is the only waterfront fire station in St. Petersburg, and Station 8 on 9th Street South, built in 2011, is LEED certified. The Lakewood station, No. 11, houses the Marine Rescue team, with dive, marine and fire boat units, and answers for the Skyway bridge plus mutual aid calls in Manatee County, while a new Station 2 is being built at 6560 26th Ave. N. to replace the current one (SPFR stations).

St. Petersburg residents evacuate when Pinellas County orders their storm surge zone out, so the first step is looking up the zone on the city's Prepare, St. Pete map; mobile home residents leave for every order regardless of zone.

Pinellas County draws its evacuation zones from storm surge risk, and residents of any zone named in an order must leave; mobile and manufactured homes must always evacuate because of wind (Pinellas County evacuation). The county points to Hurricane Idalia in 2023, when it ordered a mandatory level A and mobile home evacuation, as a recent example.

By the city's own description, a large share of St. Pete sits inside evacuation zones. Its Prepare, St. Pete map layers the evacuation zones with the City Stormwater Floodplain, FEMA flood zones and active crane radius, so a single address lookup shows surge zone and rain flood risk together (City of St. Petersburg). The St. Petersburg hurricane evacuation zones guide explains what each zone letter means.

Pinellas County opens general, special needs and pet friendly shelters only as a storm requires, and St. Petersburg residents who cannot drive themselves must pre-register with the Evacuation Assistance Program at 727-551-3822.

The county warns that not every shelter opens for every storm; the list depends on a storm's size and timing, and the status of each shelter, open, closed or full, is updated once an evacuation is ordered (Pinellas County shelters). Checking that list before leaving matters more than memorizing a shelter address.

Residents registered with the city's Evacuation Assistance Program are driven to one of three kinds of destination: a general evacuation shelter, the John Hopkins Middle School special needs shelter (701 16th St. S.), or an appropriate facility such as a hospital or nursing home. The city says residents must pre-register and should not wait until a storm is approaching (City of St. Petersburg Hurricane Center).

St. Petersburg residents get emergency warnings through Alert Pinellas, a free county service that delivers texts, calls and emails, with more than 123,750 people signed up as of August 2026.

In 2025, Pinellas County sent 114 notifications through Alert Pinellas, for severe weather, tornadoes, water service outages and more (Pinellas County Emergency Management). Sign-up is free and is linked from both the county and the St. Petersburg Hurricane Center pages.

For rain flooding, the city names the National Weather Service office in Ruskin as the official voice on flood threats for St. Petersburg and the rest of Tampa Bay (City of St. Petersburg flooding).

A St. Petersburg owner can ask the city for a Flood Insurance Rate Map determination, read against FEMA maps in force since August 24, 2021, and can buy NFIP flood coverage at any address in the city.

The determination answers two questions for a St. Petersburg parcel: is it inside a flood hazard area, and does federal law then make flood coverage mandatory. Owners in a flood zone also need to know the city's 49% Rule and its permit requirements before repairing or improving a building (City of St. Petersburg flooding). Flooding reports go to 727-893-7231 or [email protected], and permit questions to the same number or [email protected].

The FEMA map is not the whole picture in St. Petersburg. The city's own stormwater floodplain marks land with at least a one in 100 chance each year of flooding from heavy rainfall, drawn from local drainage patterns that FEMA maps can miss, so checking both layers on the Prepare, St. Pete map is the more complete test (City of St. Petersburg stormwater floodplain). The St. Petersburg flood zones guide covers the insurance discount and the 49% rule in detail.

Florida DEP says no part of Florida, St. Petersburg included, is technically free of sinkhole risk because the whole state sits on carbonate rock, and no database of every sinkhole in Florida exists within any government agency or private company.

The Florida Geological Survey keeps a downloadable database of reported subsidence incidents, but most entries have not been field-checked and the cause is not verified. A sinkhole on private property is the owner's responsibility, not a government agency's, though in some cases the owner's property insurance may cover evaluation and repair of a confirmed sinkhole, and where there is a risk of physical harm DEP says to call local law enforcement (Florida DEP sinkhole FAQ). The St. Petersburg sinkhole risk guide breaks down the Pinellas incident reports and the state insurance rules.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the City of St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg Fire Rescue, St. Petersburg Police Department, Pinellas County and Florida DEP pages linked above.