Charlotte County residents preparing for potential tropical system

As the clouds gather and the winds begin to whisper, people are bracing for what could be a stormy weekend due to a looming tropical system.

WINK News headed to the Home Depot in Punta Gorda to see if anyone was buying preparation supplies. Most people were fully prepared and some were not prepared enough. Most concerns were about boats.

Ed Ward was on his way to help his friend get his boat out of the water before the weekend.

“We are going to go take the boats out of the water and put them in storage for the weekend, just in case,” said Ward.

Boat business owners are doing the same heavy lifting, but instead of removing the boats, Ralph Allen, who runs King Fisher Fleet at Fisherman Village in Punta Gorda, is making sure they are secured to the dock.

“We put extra dock lines and have gone around on the boats, secured the deck chairs, gone around on land and moved signs, chairs, garbage cans that are wind-blowable,” said Allen.

Allen predicted high water levels, which makes developing storms hard to prepare for. He said it takes him half a day to prep.

“The storm goes past us, the wind will go southwest behind the storm, and that happens to coincide with that high tide in the afternoon,” said Allen, “so I think the afternoon on Sunday we will probably see surprising water levels here.”

Charlotte County Fire and EMS public information officer Todd Dunn said they will have a crew on watch and others on call ready to come in.