Floridians make last-minute preparations before Helene's landfall

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live from Crawfordville, Florida, on the evening of Sept. 25, as people finished boarding homes and rain began falling about 24 hours before landfall.

Transcript

00:00So, our team coverage continues here. AccuWeather storm chaser meteorologist Tony Laubach is

00:05live in Crawfordville, Florida with more on how people and communities are preparing for

00:10this storm. Tony, are people taking this one seriously?

00:17Straight answer, Jeff. Yes, we are definitely seeing that. In fact, I would almost go out

00:22on a limb to say probably more serious than I would have given credit for. So, good for

00:25folks here in the Florida Panhandle. It's easy sometimes to get a little complacent

00:30when we talk about these systems and we get that a lot with storms. This one is striking

00:34a chord with folks though. Right now, we were talking, Jeff, if you remember 24 hours ago

00:38I was standing on a beach in bright sunshine. You would have had no idea anything was happening.

00:43Now, literally in the course of the live hit here, we are seeing some rain come down here.

00:47I would almost call this maybe like a baby squall. Not really seeing a whole lot of heavy

00:52rain but just enough to where it's an inconvenience to the live shot because we don't have the

00:56rain gear out because it wasn't raining when we started this out. A little bit of a breeze

01:00but definitely a step or two down from where we were about this time yesterday. Now, of

01:05course, this time tomorrow, we're going to be like off the cliff in terms of how deteriorated

01:11the conditions are going to get. In fact, deteriorating is probably taking a little

01:14lightning. I think we're going to be talking about maybe near catastrophic conditions for

01:18a lot of these areas as we get into the evening tomorrow. But today has been all about prep

01:23work and we've been seeing folks, those that were left this morning and this afternoon,

01:28they were taking care of the last second boarding up. They were taking care of the last second

01:32sandbags. We ran into just a couple of residents in what was pretty much ghost towns there

01:37along St. George Island, Apalachicola. Not many folks left. There were more emergency

01:41crews, media, and storm chasers than there were any residents by this point. But a lot

01:46of them taking those last second preparations. We ran into one particular gentleman who owns

01:51a company whose job is basically to come out and board up the houses of the folks out there

01:57that have left ahead of Helene.

01:59Basically, I'm just securing their home, making sure their windows and stuff is boarded up

02:06as I can. I've went to several clients that didn't even ask me to secure their homes and

02:11went and put shutters up for repeat customers. I don't know. I'm having a feeling we're really

02:16going to get a bad storm.

02:22And you heard him there. He's talking about it again. A lot of these folks have been here

02:25for years and years of years, have dealt with the Ians and the Michaels, and that has been

02:29names we've heard come up time and time again in terms of talking to a lot of these people.

02:34They're taking this storm very, very seriously. We're actually in the parking lot of one of

02:38the grocery stores here in Crawfordville. There are eight cars in the parking lot right

02:43now, just not many folks out. Everybody's already taken all the precautions, hopefully

02:47done everything they needed to do. We know the mandatory evacuations for a lot of these

02:51areas took into effect early this morning, so people taking it seriously. And we are

02:56now getting into the time of this system where you're going to wake up tomorrow and it is

03:01going to be ride it out or hopefully just not be here to deal with it in the first place.

03:04That's well said there, Tony. And we're going to be checking back with you later this evening

03:08as well and plenty of times tomorrow as well.

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