Now that Tampa’s bush with Hurricane Irma has passed by, clean up from the storm has begun. Hopefully, Amalie Arena, home of the Lightning, wasn’t impacted to a degree that requires any major work.
During the storm, the Florida Panthers home, the BB&T Center, hosted out-of-state recovery crews while Germain Arena in Estero (where the Lightning had been scheduled to host a rookie tournament) was open as southwest Florida’s largest emergency shelter. In Tampa, Amalie remained closed, not out of callousness, but because it’s location right next to the Garrison Channel is in an evacuation zone - which their social media team pointed out on Sunday:
We are in the Zone A evacuation zone for Tampa, which has been under a mandatory evacuation due to our location on the channel.