SILVER SPRINGS SHORES — Shh!!! Don't tell anyone, but BIG LOTS! is opening a new store in Marion County.

Company officials recently announced they plan to build at 6851 SE Maricamp Road. The store is tentatively set to open in early 2023.

Company officials said although a building permit has been filed, the date on when they will open depends on several factors, including the pace of construction and the availability of staffing. They said once they can finalize those details, they will make the details known.

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When the store opens for business, officials said, there will be plans for fanfare, including doorbuster deals.

In a news release, BIG LOTS! CEO Bruce Thorn is quoted as saying that his team has been looking for new store locations nationwide "where we can serve the local community."

"We saw a great opportunity in Ocala," he said.

He believes that "area shoppers will enjoy our unique offering of surprising finds and amazing deals, and we can’t wait to share that experience with them very soon.”

Customers' reactions

Presently, there are BIG LOTS! stores in the Hillside Center shopping plaza along State Road 40 and at 8602 SW State Road 200. The chain has more than 1,442 stores in 48 states.

The company's headquarters is in Columbus, Ohio, and the stores are known for discount prices on a variety of products including furniture, mattresses and grocery items.

Those lower-price items are what attract customers like Mike Faulkner, who lives in the Ocala National Forest. He said he shops at BIG LOTS! once a month and mainly picks up food items while at the store.

Faulkner thinks "it's a good thing" that the chain is expanding here.

"I live in the forest and there isn't anything out there," he said.

Contact Austin L. Miller at austin.miller@starbanner.com

Florida is a special place.

There’s beautiful beaches, the Daytona 500, Disney World, and a dude on bath salts eating people’s faces… and gators… LOTS of gators.

In fact, Florida is packed with wildlife from the oceans and swamps, to the inlands lake and forests. In addition to gators, you can find dolphins, manatees, snakes, turtles, alligators, panthers, black bears and countless bird species like flamingos.

Of course, the alligators are really the bread and butter of the state, with estimates of over a million present in the state.

And this one will make you think twice about getting in the water…

Kayla Jane of Kayla Jane’s Crystal Kayaks shared some footage to Facebook from Florida’s Silver Springs, a popular tourist attraction in Central Florida.

In the video, we can a gator affectionately named Big Head Fred, who just so happens to be chomping on a smaller gator.

It looks like it might be all over for this poor fella, but any doubts are immediately quashed when Fred lifts him high up into the air and viscously slams him down on the shores of the bank.

Like a WWE finishing move, this sucker was absolutely wrecked… all I could think about was getting rag dolled by water dinosaur.

“Big head Fred is back at it again, eating another alligator.”

And later, Kayla and company stumbled upon the aftermath.

Meet No Head Ted…

“The aftermath of my last video, Big Head Fred made a No Head Ted.”

Alligator Picks Drone Out Of Mid Air

You can’t make this stuff up…

Alligators are known to eat the odd strange thing. Anytime they slice one open they inevitably find a wild amount of stuff inside. We’re talking dog collars, car parts, bullets, thousand-year-old arrow heads and sometimes, even human remains…

They also indulge in the odd bit of garbage eating. That should be enough to scare you off of these creatures. Anything that can swallow trash is definitely capable of chewing up a human.

Gators are incredible predators that strike with speed in short bursts trying to use the element of surprise.

This fella found that out the hard way when he flew his drone in trying to get some good shots.

Out of nowhere the gator leaps up and grabs the drone flying above him in the air. Onlookers watched as the gator tries to scarf the drone down, but after a few good chomps the drone starts smoking very badly as everyone yells at the gator to stop.

The gator just doesn’t care though, it keeps on chewing with the smoke coming out like there’s a fire lit in his stomach. I mean, it looked like a literal fire breathing dragon…

Yup, that’s how tough these prehistoric beasts are… they will swallow a drone that’s nearly on fire and not think twice about it.

Unfired Bullet, Arrowheads & More Found Inside Alligator

Alligators are one of those animals that will eat just about anything.

Like I’ve said before, if it’s edible they’ll eat it. If its not edible, they still might eat it.

That theory was proved correct by the stomach contents of two real big alligators recently taken by a hunters in Mississippi. Fortunately this time, the gators list of previous meals did not include a photography drone or any spark-plugs or disappearing dogs.

The big reptiles did have some interesting artifacts hidden deep inside their guts though.

According to the Mississippi Clarion Ledger, Shane Smith, the owner of Red Antler Processing in Yazoo, City Mississippi had heard legends of the biggest gators usually having unusual items in their stomachs so he decided to take a closer look.

“We have been cutting into a few big gators to see what was in their stomach, everyone so far has had something cool in it. The 13 foot 5 inch gator brought in by John Hamilton today, produced the shock of the year!”

Inside of the first 13-foot 5-inch, 750-pound gator, he wound up finding a few objects he knew seemed unnatural, but he was unable to identify exactly what they were so he took photos and sought consultation with an expert.

He was shocked when he learned what he had found.

The Mississippi Department of Mapping and Environmental Quality determined that the broken stone arrowhead he discovered was actually a dart point from an atlatl. The relic dates back to 5,000 and 6,000 BC.

Atlatls are primitive weapons that launch spears with more velocity than humans can normally throw them otherwise.

The cupped shape on the upper end of point acts a lever to increase the speed of the spear is a telltale sign of arrowhead for an atlatl spear.

Inside of the gator was also another ancient artifact known as a plummet. Researchers have been unable to determine exactly what plummets were used for but they are made from iron oxide and closely resemble lead weights. The particular plummet inside of this gator is estimated to be about 3,800 years old.

Smith also examined the stomach contents of the second big gator.

The 13-foot 2-inch, 787-pound gator had an unused bullet inside of its gut.

“We found a bullet in it, and it had not been fired from a gun.

I don’t know how it got in there.”

Ricky Flynt, the Alligator Program Coordinator with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks confirmed that that gators oftentimes incidentally ingest random items off the bottom of rivers, ponds, and sloughs while they take in small rocks and other objects to line their stomachs and aid in digestion.

“Alligators, like other animals such as birds and other reptiles, are known for ingesting grit and rocks to help with digestion. We know alligators and crocodiles do that.

Sticks, wood, things they can’t digest get into their stomachs. I found a piece of cypress in an alligator’s stomach that was 15 inches long.”

Kayaker Charged By Alligator In North Carolina

Oh, hell no…

Look, I don’t spend much time out kayaking through the coastal rivers of North Carolina, but after this, I don’t really plan to.

Experienced kayaker Peter Joyce was out paddling down the Waccamaw River recently when out of nowhere, his kayak was charged by a hungry gator.

The gator hit so hard that it knocked the kayak over, except Joyce was able to grab hold of a branch to keep it from completely tipping upside down.

He shared his experience with WECT:

“I thought I heard a fish jump to my left, turned out not to be a fish. About three feet from the kayak I made out the head of the gator and that was it, I had no time to react.

My mind was playing catch-up at that point. Basically, when I made out the head of the gator towards the front end of the kayak it was kind of just a state of shock.

As soon as it hit the kayak and I went what just happened? If it hit and there was nothing to grab on the right side of me, I would have inverted… It could’ve been a lot worse.”

Just the eerie calm of the river prior to the attack was enough to give me the willies.

And props to Joyce for having the stone to paddle his way into the gator’s kitchen.

As for me, I’m gonna stay over here on dry land…

Guest columnist

We’ve all heard the saying, “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” When it comes to creating a better Basin Management Action Plan (BMAP) for the Santa Fe River, that’s exactly what the Florida Springs Council did.

The purpose of a BMAP is to reduce water pollution levels back down to the point where we don’t have algae blooms and mass manatee die-offs, or get sick from going into the creeks in our backyards. For Outstanding Florida Springs — like Ichetucknee, Poe, Silver and Rainbow — the law requires these plans to achieve water quality goals within 20 years.

In 2018, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection proposed BMAPs for 24 impaired Outstanding Florida Springs. Several of these, including the BMAP for springs of the Santa Fe River, fell woefully short of that basic statutory goal.

The most obvious failing in the Santa Fe BMAP is that it only proposes a small fraction of the nitrate reductions necessary to clean up the springs. At the same time, it ignores the increased pollution that will inevitably occur in the next 20 years from population growth and greater agricultural intensity.

At best, DEP’s BMAP is a prescription for treading water. At worst, our springs will be more polluted in 20 years than they are today.

In response, a handful of Florida environmental groups and several brave individuals challenged the legitimacy of five Outstanding Florida Springs BMAPs in court. We expect a ruling from the First District Court of Appeals on those cases soon.

During this long legal process, the Florida Springs Council concluded that, since the state was shirking its responsibility to create a credible BMAP, we would do it ourselves. The result is a “Better BMAP for the Santa Fe River Springs,” available at floridaspringscouncil.org/betterbmap.

What makes a small non-profit think it can write a better BMAP than a state agency with a multi-billion annual budget?

We have the great advantage of caring not a whit about political considerations but only the health of the springs. Unlike DEP, we’re honest about the scope of the problem and the seriousness of the measures that will have to be undertaken to reverse decades of manmade degradation.

Everyone agrees that we must reduce nitrate pollution in the Santa Fe River basin by approximately two-thirds, or 1.8 million pounds per year. That’s no small task. DEP’s BMAP only gets us about a quarter of the way there. So what will it take to restore the Santa Fe?

First, we have to stop making the problem worse. That means requiring all new residential and commercial developments to connect to advanced wastewater treatment facilities, prohibiting in-ground lawn irrigation systems and the use of lawn fertilizer containing nitrogen on new lots, and placing a moratorium on new agricultural water use permits.

Then we have to deal with the existing pollution by allocating the required nitrate reductions to specific categories of pollution sources (farm fertilizer, septic tanks, urban fertilizer, etc.), and finding policies and projects capable of achieving those reductions.

In the case of the Santa Fe River, and many other Florida waters, agriculture is the major source of pollution and, therefore, must be responsible for the vast majority of the reductions. While urban fertilizer and septic tank pollution are real issues that must be addressed, even if they were eliminated the springs of the Santa Fe River would still not meet water quality goals.

The challenge is showing how agricultural pollution can be cut by approximately 70% percent in a state where farmers have the legal right to pollute our waters. It will involve more advanced agricultural practices, like precision fertilizer placement and soil-moisture sensors, but more importantly it will require large-scale conversions of intensive agriculture to non-polluting land uses like forestry.

These initiatives will require legislation creating a new type of groundwater and nutrient conservation easement and ongoing ecosystem payments for farmers willing to convert their lands, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in funding annually from the state to implement.

Our “Better BMAP” is intended to show the people of Florida, as well as our elected and appointed leaders, that springs restoration, though difficult, is achievable.

In the end, we can only hope that they will take our recommendations seriously. If not, they should have the decency to admit that, although recovering our springs is a worthy and achievable goal, they don’t have the political will to make it happen.

Ryan Smart is the executive director of the Florida Springs Council. The “Better BMAP for the Santa Fe River Springs” was funded in part by a grant from the nonprofit Fish & Wildlife Foundation of Florida via proceeds from the ‘Protect Florida Springs" license plate.

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ORLANDO, Fla. – A recent study from Lending Tree found Orlando has some of the highest immigrant homeownership rates in the nation.

Homeownership is part of the American dream.

“What better than to have your roots and your legacies for generations to come,” Susan West, the president of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals North Orlando chapter said.

The non-profit is made up of 100 real estate professionals from realtors to lending and title companies. They all work with the goal of increasing sustainable Hispanic homeownership in Central Florida.

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“We want to assist with them buying a home, buying the right home, being qualified financially to do so and then keeping the home,” West said.

That is a growing trend in Central Florida, according to a recent study from Lending Tree.

Jacob Channel, a senior economist with Lending Tree, said the study found Orlando ranks in the top 15 in the nation of cities with the highest share of homes owned and occupied by people born outside of the United States.

“Florida as a whole is and has been for quite some time a very, very popular area for people born outside of the United States,” Channel said.

Channel analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2020 American Community Survey. He found about 20% of the total Orlando population is foreign-born. Of that, he said nearly 60% live in owner-occupied housing units compared to 63% of people born in the U.S.

“So right there you can see a little bit of a discrepancy start to emerge where if you’re born in the United States you’re more likely to live in a home that you own whereas if you’re born outside you’re a little bit less likely,” Channel said.

Channel adds foreign-born homeowners shouldn’t be blamed for the rise in home prices.

“The reality is the majority of the activity in the housing market is being conducted by people who live in the area, who are born in the area, and ultimately as a result they’re probably going to have a little bit more influence over how the overall housing market is doing,” he said.

The study also found immigrant homeowners are more likely to be housing cost-burdened, which means they spend 30% or more of their monthly income on housing costs.

Channel adds foreign-born homebuyers can face different challenges when entering the housing market, including language barriers and not understanding America’s financial and lending systems.

West said as more Hispanic families become mortgage ready, the nonprofit is there to help them.

“Our job is to get out in the communities and say here you are mortgage ready. Here we are as real estate professionals to show you the homes you can qualify for and to put you in the communities where you can increase your legacy, create roots and really take advantage of the American dream,” West said.

This week marks five years since Hurricane Irma hit Florida.

Nearly the entire peninsula was under a hurricane watch or warning by the time the storm reached the state's southwestern shore.

Irma caused 123 deaths in the state. An incredibly strong storm, the damage it brought contributed to the most expensive year of weather events ever, totaling more than $300 billion across 16 events.

As of July 2022, federal assistance to households and communities that sustained damage have totaled $5.58 billion.

Notably, the storm caused a massive evacuation of an estimated 6.8 million Floridians, displacing roughly a third of residents and visitors.

Here's a look back at the storm's formation, its aftermath and changes to the state's emergency response nearly half a decade later:

Irma’s path to destruction

Irma started as a tropical wave off the west coast of Africa on Aug. 27, 2017. Just three days later, satellite imagery indicated that the surface circulation had become well-defined and deep convection was sufficiently organized. Later that same day, the ninth system of the season was named: Tropical Storm Irma. By Aug. 31, Irma developed a ragged eye. Within 30 hours of being designated a tropical depression, Irma became a hurricane. Only two days after developing, rapid intensification allowed Hurricane Irma to reach major hurricane status. Between Sept. 2 and 4, Hurricane Irma moved over warmer sea surface temperatures. This allowed Irma to grow and strengthen even more, reaching Category 5 status on Sept. 5.

The hurricane then passed over Cuba and weakened slightly to a Category 4 before making landfall in Florida on September 10 near Cudjoe Key with maximum winds of more than 130 miles per hour. Later that day, Irma would go on to make its final landfall near Marco Island, Florida, as a Category 3 hurricane with winds of 115 miles per hour. Once inland, Irma quickly weakened due to interaction with land and increasingly strong wind shear. While Irma did undergo a rapid weakening trend through September 10, the extent of tropical storm-force winds was quite large, extending more than 400 miles from the center. By September 11, Irma weakened to a tropical storm just west of Gainesville, Florida. As it continued northwestward into Alabama, Irma became a remnant low before eventually dissipating over southeastern Missouri on September 13.

Warning signs

“Irma was a classic Cape Verde hurricane,” said Robert Molleda, Warning Coordinator Meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Miami. “They form during the peak of hurricane season, if the conditions are right.”

Hurricanes of these kind can reach major hurricane status early on and maintain their intensity for a long period. Irma maintained 185-plus mile per hour winds for over 36 hours. Because the storm formed so far east, the silver lining is that there was several days to prepare.

“It was the first major hurricane to hit Florida since Wilma,” which hit in 2005, Molleda said. “Some hurricanes don’t give us that luxury to prepare, so we could track it before it even became a threat.”

In his role as warning coordinator, Molleda worked to brief South Florida leaders as they made decisions on public safety.

“We don’t work in a bubble,” Molleda said “all these agencies, we work together, and that organization is so important, especially in a case like Irma.”

Though South Florida ultimately experienced something closer to Category 1 conditions, Molleda emphasized 80 or 90 mile per hour winds are still very dangerous. Molleda also points out the fact the storm stayed over land also helped bring wind speeds down. If the storm would have tracked just a few miles west, he said, the center of the storm would have passed over the coastline, making the effect of storm surge much more severe.

The National Weather Service was prepared for storm surge that year. 2017 was actually the first year storm surge warnings were issued in addition to hurricane warnings, which warn for wind. Though introduced before Irma, the storm proved to be the testing ground for these new warnings.

“We made these separate warnings to make sure people understand the real threat of storm surge,” which Molleda points out is the leading killer during a hurricane. “We need people to not just receive the information but also understand it.”

Five years after Irma, when asked if Florida is in a better place, Molleda said, “I don’t think there’s a better state in terms of the way we approach hurricanes. I don’t think there’s a better state equipped to handle hurricanes. We’ve learned lots of lessons.”

The biggest challenge of Irma, Molleda said, was not Irma’s impact on one single location, but the fact it traveled up the peninsula, affecting so much of the state’s population. “It’s the amount of people being affected,” Molleda said, “imagine all of those actions that need to happen in each of those counties. Now magnify that.”

Millions on the move

“What was unique about Irma was that it affected everything from small, fiscally constrained counties around Lake Okeechobee to big cities like Tampa, St. Pete and Miami,” said Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. At the time in 2017, Guthrie was a public safety administrator in Pasco County. Following Irma, Guthrie was asked by state administration to assist with response and spent seven weeks with the Division.

“It affected people across the socio-economic table. This hurricane did not discriminate,” he said.

Because Irma covered so much territory, the storm put a strain on the emergency response system.

“All emergency managers need the same resources,” Guthrie said, “so when you have 47 counties asking for those resources, you have to start prioritizing.” The Division had to bring in 33 teams of first responders from other states to meet the needs of affected counties. Additionally, according to FEMA nearly 3,000 federal workers from 40 agencies were also deployed to Florida.

But as help streamed into Florida, many fled, or attempted to flee the hurricane, causing a migration that further clogged up the recovery process. According to Florida Department of Transportation, the state of emergency declared by then-governor Rick Scott spurred 23 counties to order mandatory evacuations. The rapid spike in demand of gasoline and high traffic made it difficult for distributors to keep up, stalling or stranding evacuees.

“It’s estimated that 3 to 4 million people evacuated that did not have to evacuate,” Guthrie said. The Division promoted a program called Know Your Zone, Know Your Home. It instructs only those people who live in an evacuation zone to leave when put under an evacuation order.

“If you do not live in an evacuation zone and are not being asked to evacuate, it’s important to know your home and what kind of conditions it can withstand." Guthrie said people can learn more about the code by working with their local property appraiser. “After you find out when your house was built, you can find out what the code was at that time.”

The Florida Building Code was implemented in 2002. For older buildings, there are ways to retrofit your home.

The Division now aims to reduce unnecessary evacuation in part because it can slow down first responders.

“If you evacuate, and your house is still standing, or it still has power, you’re likely going to want to get back into that area,” Guthrie said, “the problem is, the hurricane likely did damage between Point A and Point B.” Those evacuees will then get on the same roadways as first responders. “Every time a truck has to move or stop, they’re pausing the recovery process.”

This advice does not apply for special needs residents, however. If somebody uses medical devices which require electricity to operate, and cannot risk a power outage, Guthrie encourages those individuals to get enrolled in a special needs shelter through their local emergency management office or make other plans to evacuate.

Guthrie said the emergency management community learned several valuable lessons following Irma in addition to these evacuation recommendations. “There were areas that went weeks without power,” Guthrie said, “so historically, we asked for people to prepare three days of supplies. After Irma, we recommend 5-7 days.”

The more rural someone lives, the more they may want to store up as they may be longer without power as compared to someone in an urban area. “The most important thing is to know your own personal situation.” Guthrie also hopes people will look to local resources and evacuate closer to their community when the next hurricane hits.

“There’s this myth you have to get out of the state completely,” he said, “you can evacuate just tens of miles away and be safe.”

Lessons we learned from Irma

The Florida Public Radio Emergency Network (also known as Florida Storms) was founded as an opportunity for public media in Florida to play an impactful role in weather forecasting and public safety statewide. The organization was launched in 2012 for the 2013 hurricane season. Now a team of three meteorologists and one journalist, the team was made up of just two meteorologists back then. FPREN is located within the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida but distributes its content to the 13 public radio stations in Florida.

Hurricane Irma proved to be a testing ground for FPREN’s model, which allows the team to cut into broadcasts in markets that are being affected by severe weather. Due to Irma’s long track through the state, the FPREN team maintained continued coverage for about a two-week period. Meteorologists marathoned live coverage for 92 hours during the peak of the storm event. Irma ended up being the organization’s first long-duration event.

Though there was plenty of exhaustion, coverage of Irma proved FPREN’s impact keeping communities across Florida informed during a weather crisis. FPREN was honored at the Governor’s Hurricane Conference in 2018 with the Public Information Award and again in 2019 by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with the Community Lifeline Award for coverage of Hurricane Irma, as well as Michael and Matthew.

Copyright 2022 Storm Center.