Hurricane Evacuation Zones — Indian River County, Florida

Indian River County Emergency Management maps five lettered evacuation zones, A through E, keeping A, B and C on one map layer and D and E combined on a second.

The county map service is authored by Indian River County Emergency Management and describes itself as providing the location of hurricane evacuation zones and evacuation routes for the county (IRC Evacuation Zones map service). Its zone layer for A through C is made of 188 separate shapes, and almost all of them are Zone A: 176 Zone A polygons, 1 Zone B polygon and 11 Zone C polygons (zone count query). Zone A is broken into many separate pieces, while Zone B is a single shape and Zone C has 11.

Zones D and E are not split on the Indian River County Emergency Management map. The second layer holds one outline labeled ZONE D & E, with a recorded area of 1,999,190,137 square feet (Zones D and E layer); since the service measures in feet, that is 1,999,190,137 divided by 27,878,400 square feet per square mile, or about 71.7 square miles of Indian River County.

The zone lines are old. Every Zone A, B and C record carries the VERSION value 1273671761000 (Zones A thru C layer), and the D and E outline carries 1273671732000; both are timestamps in milliseconds that convert to May 12, 2010. As of October 12, 2026, the county layers still carried those 2010 version values. Florida Division of Emergency Management guidance says evacuation zones are designated from A to F statewide, while the Indian River County layers stop at E (FDEM zone guidance).

Indian River County Emergency Management lists 48 mobile home and RV parks that count as Zone A wherever they sit, 17 of them in the 32958 Sebastian ZIP code.

The layer is named Mobile Home Parks, Evacuation Zone A, and it lists each park with its ZIP code (county mobile home parks layer). The list is not limited to lagoon-side ZIP codes: Winter Beach MHP in 32967, Heron Cay MHP in 32966 and Sun-Ag in 32948, the Fellsmere ZIP code, are on it too. Two RV properties also appear, Vero Beach KOA and the Sunshine Travel RV Resort expansion.

FDEM explains why housing type sits alongside geography. Its statewide zone guidance lists evacuation zones, low-lying flood-prone areas, mobile homes and unsafe structures as the places most likely to be evacuated, and says residents in an ordered zone, a low-lying flood area or a mobile home should follow all orders (FDEM zone guidance). For a Gifford, Vero Beach or Sebastian park resident, the park list is therefore the first thing to check, before the zone map.

The county Evacuation Routes layer names 24 roads, from County Road 512 and Sebastian Boulevard in the north to 43rd Avenue SW in the south, plus U.S. 1, State Road 510 and the barrier island bridges and causeways.

Read in order, the 24 labels are: 17th St, 20th Pl, 20th St, 21st St, 43rd Av, 43rd Av SW, 53rd St, 7th Av, 85th St, 8th Av, 90th Av, 93rd St, Beachland Blvd, County Road 512, E Causeway Blvd, Highway A1A, Indian River Blvd, Merrill Barber Brdg, S Highway A1A, S U S Highway 1, Sebastian Blvd, State Road 510, U S Highway 1 and Wabasso Bridge Rd (county evacuation routes layer). Several roads appear twice under different labels for different segments, such as Highway A1A and S Highway A1A on the barrier island.

For barrier island residents, the list includes Wabasso Bridge Road, the Merrill Barber Bridge, E Causeway Blvd and Beachland Blvd as named roads on the bridge and causeway approaches to the barrier island (Evacuation Routes layer). Interstate 95 is not one of the 24 labels; the county list names U.S. 1, State Road 510, County Road 512 and local avenues and streets such as 43rd Avenue and 53rd Street instead.

A zone is read from the county map by location, and sample queries on October 12, 2026 show the Tax Collector Oceanside Office on the Vero Beach barrier island in Zone A while the County Administration Complex at 1801 27th Street has no zone.

The test used the county's own coordinates for public buildings (county facilities layer). At 3003 Cardinal Drive on the barrier island, the Zones A thru C layer returns ZONE A (zone query, Cardinal Drive), and the same point also falls inside the combined D and E outline (D and E query, Cardinal Drive), which shows that the D and E shape is drawn to include the lower zones rather than to exclude them.

Inland sites return nothing. The County Administration Complex at 1801 27th Street returns no record in the A thru C layer (zone query, 27th Street) and none in the D and E layer (D and E query, 27th Street). The Fellsmere (Marian Fell) Library on N Cypress Street also returns no A, B or C zone (zone query, Fellsmere). A building outside every zone still falls under any order aimed at mobile homes or unsafe structures.

Indian River County also publishes storm surge zones for hurricane categories 1 through 5, sourced to FDEM and the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council's 2021 regional evacuation study, while FDEM tells residents that evacuation orders come from local officials.

The surge layer sits in a separate service in the county's IRCEM map folder, authored by the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council (Storm Surge Zones map service), and holds polygons for Brevard, Indian River and St. Lucie counties, with Indian River shapes for categories 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (county storm surge zones layer). Each Indian River record names its source as FDEM for the Florida Statewide Regional Evacuation Update Study, 2021, and carries the VERSION value 1628035200000, which converts to August 4, 2021. The surge zones show how far water could reach in each storm strength; the lettered zones are the units an order names.

The two sets of lines should be read together. FDEM describes the evacuation zones on its statewide map as flood zones and tells residents in a zone to listen to evacuation orders from local officials (FDEM zone guidance). The county's own emergency office is Indian River County Emergency Management at the Emergency Operations Center, 4225 43rd Av, Vero Beach, phone (772) 226-3900 (county facilities layer). The office's wider role in declarations and alerts is covered on the county emergency management page. Last verified: October 12, 2026, on the Indian River County Emergency Management map service.