00:00Director Guthrie, what are you seeing and hearing on the ground across the state from residents?
00:06So right now we've got the power back on faster than we've ever done it before. We're at 99
00:11percent plus of individuals already restored with full power. A lot of those accounts came on last
00:16night. So we're down to about 20,000 or less. We hope to have a majority of those people on by
00:23the end of the day today. So again, we beat our records in the past of about 85 percent
00:29restoration in 48 hours and certainly continue to improve in that area. Right now what people
00:34are dealing with more than anything else is the flood damage in their homes. So we have
00:39over 20 non-profit organizations going door to door doing those mucking guts and getting those
00:44that stuff ripped out of there and getting out to the road's edge. We want to get as much of
00:48this debris picked up as we possibly can. Set the expectation we're not going to get it all picked
00:52up. That's just not going to happen. But we want to get as much of that picked up as we can before
00:56we get into next week's storm. And we say, you know, again, whatever that might be, whether it's
01:00a rain event or rain and a wind event, try to get as much of that picked up, especially that I-4
01:05corridor, Pinellas, Pasco, Tampa, Hillsborough. Try to get as much of that picked up as we can.
01:10That's what we're focused on right now. And Director Guthrie, what has really been, not
01:15surprising because we forecasted it, but you know the storm made landfall in the Big Bend. It was
01:21east of the west coast of Florida, about 150 to 200 miles, that is, Helene. And yet the storm surge
01:28and the damage that we've seen along the west coast of Florida has been extensive, has it not?
01:35Yeah, it has. And I really think, and maybe this is a follow-up question, so I'll go ahead and
01:39answer it. The storm surge models, you know, I've been out there with the governor of the state of
01:44Florida, appreciate his leadership, but we've been out there looking at it and it was 15 to 20 where
01:50it said it was 15 to 20. It was 1 to 3 where it's 1 to 3. That accurate, the accuracy of the
01:56National Hurricane Center, National Weather Service storm inundation mapping was dead on. And you know
02:02in 2017-2016 when that was a pilot program versus what it is today, it has gotten much better. I
02:08think people have got to stop looking at the cone and start focusing more on the storm surge. Again,
02:13if you're in the cone, you got a dual threat. You got wind, you got rain, you got storm surge.
02:16If you end up being outside that cone, you got a single threat, that is the storm surge,
02:21you've got to pay attention to that. And how's Florida able to help other states
02:25with resources while still responding to your state's need? Yeah, so Florida, we're very robust
02:32here. We have a lot of storm response capability. We are already down to, like I said, we're down to
02:38less than 20,000 homes without power. We're starting that recovery piece. So the recovery
02:44piece is not search and rescue. And I think that needs to be a distinction and I appreciate you
02:48asking the question. But our search and rescue assets, which finished up two days ago, are now
02:53moving up into North Carolina to start helping with that. We are in the process right now out
02:57of Jacksonville, sending the Jacksonville Fire Rescue Department's 50-person emergency road access
03:02team with their heavy equipment. They'll be rolling out today, heading from Jacksonville
03:06up to Western North Carolina. We're sending some people to the Raleigh State EOC in North Carolina
03:11to help out. We've already got resources on the ground with the Florida National Guard, Florida
03:14State Guard, Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, Florida Department of Transportation. So these are
03:20all of our response resources. We're now actually getting into recovery. So we're going to get those
03:24response resources to our partners to the north, helping out Will Ray and Don Campbell, those guys
03:28up there in North Carolina. They help us all the time. It's time for us to repay it and help them.
03:33And Director Guthrie, we here at AccuWeather, we are very confident that we are looking at
03:38tropical development next week in the Bay of Campeche. Now, tropical depression, named storm,
03:43either of that scenario, heading toward Florida early next week. Heavy rains, I think,
03:49our biggest impact. And how are you preparing as we're still trying to recover from Helene?
03:56That's a great question. Again, I thank you for asking it. Part of the people behind me,
04:02we have what we call FOOPS, or future operation planning. We've been doing this for four days
04:06already. We've been running different scenarios from a tropical depression to a Cat 4 hurricane
04:11hitting anywhere between Pensacola and Key West, working different scenarios all along. We're
04:16starting to focus in on that heavy rain threat, as you mentioned in the previous segment,
04:20that it's going to be more of a rain threat, probably tropical depression, tropical storm,
04:23not outside the possibilities for hurricane, but we are already focusing on that, planning on it.
04:28We're looking at putting our flood control systems out again. We think we're going to get much more
04:33for that in this storm than we did the previous storm because it was so effective.
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