Twice last year, tens of thousands of visitors were ordered to leave the Florida Keys when far-off tropical storms threatened. Both Fay and Ike wound up as little more than blustery side-swipes.

This year, Monroe County may not be as quick to pull the evacuation trigger.

While they stress public safety remains top priority, the county’s emergency management chief and top administrator are considering tweaking the long-standing policy of ordering visitors to pack up every time the Keys fall into the National Hurricane Center’s dreaded “cone of uncertainty.”

Instead, they want to make that often-difficult call storm-by-storm, weighing not just the projected path but the potential severity of a strike to an island chain particularly vulnerable to damage from powerful storms.

”If we have the exact same year, the exact same storms coming from the same exact directions, this year we’d probably have one less evacuation,” said Roman Gastesi Jr., Monroe’s top administrator.

While impacts to the Keys’ tourist-driven economy are a concern, Gastesi and Irene Toner, the county’s director of emergency management, said they aren’t the primary factors for rethinking the Keys’ evacuation policies. They point to better forecasting, better communications with emergency managers in Miami-Dade and Broward and better construction codes in the Keys as safety buffers for residents and tourists that did not exist years ago.

”We’re not saying we’re not going to ask them to leave,” Toner said. “What we’re just saying is we may be more flexible. We will look at it a little closer before we make the final call to go.”

While no formal recommendations have been made, Gastesi said he intends to discuss changes to the mandatory evacuation policy with Monroe County commissioners later this month. They could allow visitors the option of riding out at least some approaching storms — but only storms with slim chances of strengthening beyond Category 1 or likely to brush the Keys with minimal damage.

Gastesi pointed to Fay last August as an example. It was projected to hit the Keys as a tropical storm, with a slight chance of growing into a Category 1 hurricane. Tourists were asked to leave two days before its projected strike and it later shifted south, sparing the Keys any serious damage.

”A Category 1, I frankly think we could probably survive that pretty easily,” Gastesi said.

Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the National Hurricane Center, said though forecasters brief emergency officials and post hurricane watches and warnings, it’s up to local officials to make evacuation calls.

While evacuations are a no-brainer in major hurricanes, emergency managers in many coastal communities struggle with the call, particularly in storms expected to be of lesser intensity.

They’re costly for businesses and governments. Last year, Key West Mayor Morgan McPherson estimated the southernmost city alone lost about $1.5 million a day during an evacuation. If a storm fizzles or turns, the public also may not cooperate as well next time.

The decision is more complex and critical in the Keys. Some 75,000 residents and typically tens of thousands of visitors stay on the string of small, low-lying islands.

There is only one road out, the 128-mile Overseas Highway. It has two lanes much of the way, some sections flood during storms and a wreck on any of 42 bridges can knot traffic for hours.

Make the call too late and evacuees could be stuck on perilously exposed roads or run into gridlock as they exit the 18-mile stretch of U.S. 1, if South Miami-Dade is also under the gun.

Monroe’s threshold for issuing a general mandatory evacuation, affecting all residents, is a Category 3 hurricane but emergency managers will urge residents in mobile homes, boats and low-lying areas to leave for any hurricane. For visitors, the call comes at least 24 hours ahead of any other evacuation orders.

Andy Newman, spokesman for the Florida Keys Tourist Development Council, said discussions of a possible change in evacuations have been preliminary only, and businesses are more concerned about the welfare of visitors than the bottom line.

”Certainly, you have to balance the safety and economic impacts, but safety is always the priority,” he said.

The policies are less likely to affect native ”Conchs” and other longtime residents, though Toner admits it’s a challenge to get many of the Keys’ famously laid-back residents to consider evacuating for even major storms.

Few people are around who recall the hurricane of 1935 that killed more than 400 people, sweeping rail cars from a track later replaced by the Overseas Highway, but Hurricane Ike last year hardly registers, either, she said. That storm, once heading for the Keys, changed course and wound up flattening Galveston.

”People remember it temporarily,” she said. “The sun is shining, the sky is blue, everybody is fishing and they forget about it.”

© 2009 Miami Herald Media Company.