00:00 - Early this morning before 2 a.m.
00:02 a tornado struck the Clearwater Beach, Florida area.
00:05 Joining us now is Joe Bury's
00:09 Emergency Management Operations Manager
00:12 for Pinellas County, Florida.
00:14 Joe, can you tell us the extent of the damage?
00:17 What's the latest?
00:19 - Sure, thank you for having us.
00:20 Yeah, we had a tornado cut across our county this morning,
00:24 around, as you mentioned, around 2 a.m.
00:26 Made landfall at Clearwater Beach
00:28 and then cut across Dunedin, the city of Dunedin,
00:31 and then through our city of Oldsmar.
00:34 We had about three multifamily homes with damages,
00:37 seven single-family homes.
00:39 Three mobile homes were damaged as well, too.
00:42 One appears to be destroyed.
00:45 We need to further inspect that.
00:46 And then several commercial buildings
00:48 that each had several businesses within them as well
00:52 sustained some damages.
00:55 - So far, Joe, are there any injuries?
00:58 - No, we're very fortunate that we had no injuries.
01:02 One elderly lady was removed from her home
01:06 where the roof and the wall was damaged and blown off.
01:11 But other than that, we were very blessed
01:13 that we had no injuries.
01:15 - Joe, how many homes and businesses have sustained damages?
01:19 - We're a total of 13 residential homes
01:25 and two commercial businesses.
01:27 - And my last question for you,
01:29 what's the biggest challenge now
01:31 for your teams going forward?
01:34 - Sure, it's that cleanup, assessing everything.
01:38 Can the homes be repaired?
01:40 And what extent that is needed for that.
01:43 We're still trying to do detailed damage assessment
01:46 to see if we do qualify for any federal assistance.
01:49 And then we're encouraging anyone that received damages
01:53 to report them at disaster.pinellas.gov
01:57 so that we could track those damages there.
02:00 - Well, folks, I wanna thank Joe Boreas for joining us.
02:05 He's emergency management for Pinellas County.
02:10 Thank you for taking the time out of your day to join us,
02:13 Joe.
02:14 - Okay, thank you for reporting on this.
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