Governor to provide updates on recovery from Hurricane Milton

Good afternoon. We’re here in Plant City. I’m joined with Kevin Guthrie General, John Haass Florida, Attorney General and former Strawberry Festival, Queen Ashley Moody Hillsboro County, Sheriff Chad Chronister is doing *** great job. Representatives, Alvarez and Gonzalez, Pittman County commissioner Miller and also the Plant City Mayor Nathan Kilton and I want to thank everybody for what they’re doing. We obviously prepared for this storm for *** long time, tracked it. I think the number one thing people were saying as the storm was forming and then bearing down on the west coast of Florida with storm surge, storm surge, storm surge. And while we did see some significant, I was down in Charlotte County, there was definitely surge. Tampa Bay did not get the surge that everyone feared. But what you ended up seeing is just massive on the north side of the storm, huge amounts of water. You did have wind, of course. And so that created inland situations where had *** lot of flooding and water continued to rise even after the storm left when we were flying in today, coming in some of these places in Hillsboro County, you know, you saw really, really significant examples of the flooding. So it’s *** real serious thing when you get 1015 inches with one storm coming through. So we are here today. This is one of our fuel distribution sites. We always say leading up to the storm, prepare to have fuel, have all this. Assume you’re going to lose power, assume this will happen for we say five days even though we work to get things moving before then. But the fuel is an issue. When you have power out at gas stations, you can’t pump fuel when you have ports that are interrupted. They don’t get the shipments in as much. So we have *** lot of fuel that we brought into Florida to be able to help get people through the patch as we get back and resolve the private sector resolves the issue. So we stockpiled *** lot of fuel. We’ve activated *** lot of our fuel contracts and we want to be able to give people an option. I see *** lot of people waiting in lines for the gas stations that do have power and these are really long lines and obviously as power gets restored, maybe some of them have generators that they can get on. And then the port of Tampa is open, you’re going to see the fuel flowing. But in the meantime, we want to give people another option. So this fuel depot here is one of the three sites that opened this morning plant city here, Bradenton, 202 180 K road and then ST Pete, 801st Avenue in ST Pete. We’re going to, we’re in the process of doing more. We’re going to do another one closer to the heart of Tampa in Hillsboro County. We’re going to do another one in *** different part of Pinellas County and we’re going to do at least one in Sarasota County and perhaps some more depending on the demand that we have. And so these are, these are free for people. You get, we’re doing 10 gallons per customer. So you go, you get it and you can be on your way. So this is stuff that we are providing for people to be able to do so these public fuel sites, although we have done fuel support in the past, we’ve never done it to this scale. And that is on top of the amount of fuel that we provided directly to service stations as the ports closed, even though they had dockside operations. Eventually that had to stop. We went and did 400,000 gallons of diesel directly into the supply chain and then 500,000 gallons of regular gasoline directly into the supply chain. So some of the fuel that people got at the service stations as *** result of Florida providing that we also prior to the storm had 31 sites for emergency fuel distribution for first responders, health care workers and other critical personnel. So right now, we still have 1.8 gallons of diesel and over *** million gallons of regular fuel that are on hand in the state. And these are going to be used at these fuel depots primarily until the entire fuel situation is resolved. Now, we have Florida ports that are actively receiving shipments like Port Tampa Bay. Additional vessels are en route, they are filling up the trucks and we’re bringing the where they need to be. Port Canaveral has taken on additional fuel vessels and one terminal alone did 531 trucks yesterday. And then we have Florida highway patrol that will escort the tankers from the ports to the respective service stations. Now, most of the fuel, if you see *** gas station is out, most of that is, they don’t have power. Now, they may also need to get their fuel shipment as well. But if they don’t have power to be able to run the pumps, then it’s an academic issue. So what we’re doing in the state of Florida, Kevin Guthrie and his team, they have generators that can be deployed. Now, *** lot of these gas stations quite frankly are supposed to have generators. Very few of them have used them that I’ve seen, especially in the areas that were the hardest hit be that as it may. And so Kevin and the DM are working with the utilities if you have *** stretch where you got service stations and power is anticipated to come on later today. Well, then they’re not going to rush *** generator down to rewire it for the generator when the power is going to come on. Anyways, if they think it may be, you know, 48 hours or more, then they’re seeing that demand and bringing generators to those service stations. So I think you’ll see, you can continue to see that, but we are also optimistic that you’re going to see *** lot of these stations end up getting power relatively short order in the coming days. So major fuel effort under way, you’re going to have more of these state run sites that are going to be available. We understand particularly to get people through the weekend. We want to be able to do, use the fuel reserves that we provided and get those into people’s tanks. So I appreciate Kevin and his team working very quickly to make this happen. Yesterday, the state of Florida submitted our post landfall major disaster declaration to unlock additional resources for the state. And this morning, we got that approved by the president of the United States and we have been granted individual assistance which is individual and households and public assistance, which is emergency work and repair and replacement of disaster damage facilities for 34 impacted counties including Hillsboro and all the counties in this area. We’ve also submitted requests for the following federal programs to supplement other efforts. We already have active transitional sheltering assistance, clean and sanitized, non congregate, sheltering like travel trailers and hotels and direct housing 18 month trailers. So Kevin can talk *** little bit more about that, but he’s working very hard on that. We have continued to have search and rescue teams active. I think as you’ve seen around Hillsboro Pinellas, Pasco, when the storm left and Kevin and our team had said this was going to happen, water continued to rise. So you’ve seen rescues done by the Hillsboro County Sheriff’s office, Florida National Guard, Florida State Guard, the other sheriff’s departments and police departments in the area. And we appreciate that, you know, fortunately, some of the stuff we’ve seen is damaging, not though at the 1520 ft. And so fortunately, we never had the 15 to 20 ft storm surge, but still rising, water is very dangerous and these guys have sprung into action. So all the folks who have responded locally, thank you for what you’ve done. We’re now with Florida National Guard supporting 19 counties. We have 115 active missions. 28 engineer missions which are helping clear sand off the roads and some of the things that the counties need focused on 39 points of distribution in 14 counties. I know there are *** number that opened in Hillsboro this morning. Those are basically responding to requests from the counties. So, for example, you know, some counties like Pinellas have opened their own pods. I think they have some municipal pods and some county, they’ve asked us to do three mobile pods to supplement. That’s fine. If you want us to do that, we’ll do that. If you want us to do full pods, we’ll do full pods. One of the things I’ve spoken with some folks locally about is ensuring that there’s supplies of things like ice. And so we have major trucks filled with ice that are now en route to the Tampa Bay area and that will be available at these pods once those trucks arrive, and we’re happy to do that. So, as of this morning, over 1000 individuals have been rescued from flood waters or other hazards. We still have massive amounts of resources available and we were able to successfully help over 400 health care facilities evacuate prior to the storm and we’re proud of how well those facilities have responded and done very well. So as of nine o’clock this morning, 2.4 million accounts have been restored with power. 2.4 million accounts restored since the storm hit on Wednesday night. And if you think about it yesterday, Friday was really the first full day of restoration efforts because the storm didn’t fully leave the state until the afternoon on Thursday. And so I know people were working hard on Thursday and they got in very quickly. But Friday was like the first full day. So 2.4 million restored 1.6 million currently remaining without 440,000 FPL, 620,000, Duke, 418,000 Tico Co Ops, 94,000 Muni’s 38,000 Co ops have done very, very quick. You know, you think you have FPL, these are major companies, right? You kind of see how they can do it. The co ops traditionally have not been able to do that. They are really, really doing well on the co op side. So good job on that. So as of 9 a.m. this morning, Hillsboro was 56% out. Manatee 42 Pinellas, 67 Sarasota, 30 Volusia, 26 state of Florida has responded to local requests from Hillsboro with the following resources, 15 truckloads of shelf stable meals, 10 truckloads of water, four truckloads of Tarp, five truckloads of ice sleeping trailers for 200 water pumps, six vacuum trunks for trucks for storm water removal and 14 additional high water rescue vehicles cut and toss began at first light by Florida Department of Transportation. They’ve now cleared 12,000 miles of roadway. They are now focusing on debris pickup on state road and are doing that very rapidly. They’ve done 150 bridge inspectors for *** total of 2400 bridges that have been inspected. We’re getting close to over 90% of all traffic signals that are back optional without the need for *** generator. If you come to *** traditional four way stop signal and it’s out treated as *** four way stop. All the major highways and bridges in the Tampa Bay area are open. All commercial airports besides Sarasota Bradenton are open. We originally had *** report that I said yesterday that it was going to be open this morning. It turns out they are going to need *** few more days for that. So that will reopen Wednesday, October 16. But all other commercial airports are open. 18 school districts that experienced closures last week will be open on Monday, October 14th. You can find the information for your school district. If you go to fl e.org/storm info, FL e.org/storm info. Remember we’re still seeing hazards after the storm, especially in standing water. We have continued to see unfortunately, some fatalities as *** result of things like downed power lines. So please continue to exercise caution as you recover from the storm ladder, safety, generator safety. If you need help with things like clearing debris off your property, we have organizations that are in Florida that can help you with that and you can call Hope Florida 1 833 get hope 1833, get hope to be able to see the resources that are available for you and that hope line will be 24 7 for the next two weeks. The Hope bus will be located in the following places today. New College of Florida in Sarasota 10 a.m. to three Bayside church in Bradenton 12 to 5 and then Murdoch Baptist Church in Port Charlotte. 10 to 3. Hope teams will be deployed to canvas in ST Lucie, Fort Pierce and Fort Myers neighborhoods to support communities that were impacted the tornadoes and they will be going door to door with supplies as well as with activate hope cards. Of course, we have our emergency bridge loan that has been activated, businesses up to 50,000 agriculture, up to 100,000 cattle and Citrus, up to 150,000 interest loans, www dot Florida jobs.org/e. We’ve also now raised millions more for the Florida disaster fund. But if folks want to participate and help with that, I know there will be *** lot of people in this community that will appreciate that Florida disaster fund.org Florida disaster fund.org again. I want to thank everybody that’s been involved. I know particularly here in Hillsboro County. You’ve had folks, Chad and his team have been working not just this storm but from the previous storm, same with Pinellas and Manatee Sarasota Pasco. All these places have been doing this now for close to three weeks from when we did the state of emergency for Helene. So it’s not easy to do. People are rising to the occasion. We got *** lot of work left to do, but we will absolutely get through this. Ok. Kevin. Thank you governor. Good morning everyone. I want to pick up where the governor left off on this fuel. We are happy to report that he, as he said, the ports are starting to take in fuel by 12 o’clock today. There will be four different locations at the Tampa port that will be offloading 37.3 million gallons of fuel that will happen starting at 12 o’clock today. And that will immediately be available for pumping into the distribution lines. Governor’s because of leadership like that, that makes us successful, that you were able to sit and work, sit with federal partners, state partners, state agencies and get that done. Urban search and rescue teams are finishing up the search and rescue operations. And I want to thank all the first responders, those that are here at this site and those that are at sites all around the state of Florida for immediately jumping into action and getting to work. If you are still in need of reunification, you cannot find *** loved one. American Red Cross is the best of that. So please make sure you call them at 1 800 Red Cross. That’s 1 800 Red Cross for the Reunification line. As the governor mentioned this morning, we have been approved actually, technically, it was like midnight last night. But this morning, we were approved for our major disaster declaration for fema. They have given us full category *** which is debris removal, full category B which is the emergency protective measures that government, both of those categories are things that government run into problems. I’m going to address that in just *** second. But more importantly, they’ve given us 100% individual assistance for the 34 counties that we requested. So that means now that all 34 counties have been approved for individual assistance, you could go to disaster assistance.gov, that’s disaster assistance.gov and start registering today. Now, I want to caution you if you’re *** victim of both Helene and Milton, you need to separate those two. Talk about Milton in Milton’s case, talk about Helene and Helene. Helene’s case. If you cross them over, that’s gonna lead to additional bureaucratic, what we call requests for information. So keep them specific talk, Helene Damage, talk, Milton Damage with this. We have formally requested this morning at eight o’clock, four specific programs to be turned on by FEMA. They are awaiting these letters and they are already working these letters. The first one is transitional sheltering assistance. The second is one is called clean and sanitize the third one, non non congregate sheltering and then the last is direct temporary housing. So transitional sheltering assistance, this will provide up to six months of direct lodging for displaced survivors. T SA. The FEMA program will announce more of that later today after it has been announced today or once they approve that that is *** federally run program, you will go to *** federal location to get into that program. And when I say federal location I’m talking about *** federal website, federal phone number. The next one is clean and sanitize assistance. This provides *** one time payment of up to $300 for homeowners and renters to make their domiciles or homes clean and sanitize them so they can get back into their home. Next one is non congregate, sheltering, non congregate. Sheltering is the state provided travel trailers and non congregate sheltering hotel. We have been approved as *** category B measure to turn those things on. Again, category B emergency protective measure at the state and local government level to run those programs. So we are requesting that that be turned on and again, we anticipate all of these being approved. The last one is Fema’s Direct Housing Mission. Fema’s Direct housing mission is the one where they go in and put *** Fema trailer on someone’s property or in *** group site location. And that is for up to 18 months. We will provide much, much more information on all of these as they’re approved and give people access to what the programs are. Yeah, one of the things that I mentioned at the top of this in reference to what we asked for fema has approved 100% of category *** and B measures for 90 days. So I’m going to talk for just *** second to local city, special district county governments. What does this mean in layman’s terms? Every day is *** pickup day 24 7, we got 90 days at 100%. Also, that means you can do expedited project worksheets, which means FEMA will take your estimates of what you have on the ground and they will give you 50% of that cost up front so you can start paying bills. The state of Florida does this all the time. This is nothing new. It’s been around, we do it. We were approved for category B of protective measures for hurricane Milton. And within four hours, the federal government approved over $200 million for the state of Florida to start paying their bills. This is one of those times. I’m going to say city, local government, special districts be like the state ask for the expedited project worksheet, get the money in hand. They did it in four hours. All right. So please please file your expedited project worksheets if you do not know how to do that, contact the state of Florida through the county emergency management facility and we will come and help you write those expedited project worksheets as you continue to take your own recovery back to homeowners actions at home. Remember to wear appropriate safety gear. Make sure that you’re not getting involved in any type of hazardous situation. There may be down power lines in your area. Please stay away from them. If you do come across those down power lines, call your local authorities and report them if you did receive damage to your home. Make sure you’re taking pictures inside and out. Make sure that there’s *** frame of reference like *** doorknob or electrical socket outlet so that we can see exactly how high the water came up in your homes. If you need assistance with clean up, we are proud to say that we are partnering once again with crisis clean up. Crisis cleanup is available to come help you at your home at 8449651386. That’s 98449651386. Do not get caught off guard by scammers. If somebody comes to your house and says give me cash, I’ll help you out, send them packing. We will send you volunteer organizations for free $0. As I often like to say, if it’s free, it’s for me. All right, you want the free help, not the paid help. Be sure to verify contractor licenses by visiting my Florida license.com, my Florida license.com and then report any unlicensed activity at 8665321440. We have nearly 20 points of distribution open in this impacted area alone. These sites have shelf stable food, water and other items like tarps that you may need. You can find up to date locations, visiting our website at Florida disaster.org/updates. Our state assistance information line is still taking calls 24 7 and that number is 1 803 423557. Now, I know I’ve given out *** whole lot of numbers today. *** whole lot of information. The best place to go online is Florida disaster.org/updates. I encourage all of our news media outlets to link their sites to our site. And then you can also get the most up to date up to the minute information. If you follow us at FLSE RT, that’s at Florida Cert on X and Instagram and at FDEM on Facebook for real time updates again, Governor Santos, thank you so much. It makes it very easy for us to do our job when you’re at the help. Ok. Ok. So we will be announcing additional fuel depots for folks in the affected areas. As I said, we’re definitely going to do one in Tampa, do another one in Pinellas and then likely Sarasota and then maybe another one in that area as well. In addition to the Sarasota Manatee ones that we’re going to bring on the manatee one is open now. So, and then the power restoration, I mean, I know no one ever wants to have any interruption, but these linemen have been working. They were staged to have 2.4 million done within basically, I mean storm left the state Thursday afternoon and so here we are less than 48 hours from that and they do 2.4 million. These guys are working really hard. Not always an easy thing, I think *** lot of this stuff, they got *** good handle on. There may be some that has more damage. We’ll see. But everyone’s been working really hard. Ok. Anybody just getting the rest of the power back on for everyone else right now. Well, I think you talk to the utilities on that. I mean, they have the personnel, they need. Those folks were pre staged. I think it’s just *** question of, you know, there was *** lot of damage done in, in *** broad area. It takes time to assess initially. I think they worked really hard yesterday. I think you started to see numbers start to come down and I think you’re going to see *** very productive weekend for them. Good to how many trucks are actually at each site. And can you assure the people who are in these lines that they will have access to fuel here? Right. So I think it’s dependent on what the demand is, right? Do you want to give those numbers? So, in reference to the question, how we set these sites up are based on demand based on what we see in the market area as far as fuel stations down. So what you see behind us here, we’ve got over 200,000 gallons of fuel just for this site alone. And I’ve got more rolling in the way on the way, we just passed *** 7-Eleven on the way they had just run out of gas. I picked up the phone, our state emergency response chief in Guel has already got fuel running to that station because we want to get that station back up and running. It certainly helps much more pumps there. So it’s, I would say *** parallel effort between getting power back on the stations that are going to be without power for more than 48 hours. That’s the, that’s the generator program along with stations that are out of fuel, getting fuel into those stations because they can dispense much faster than we can here and then where we have both *** power problem and *** fuel problem, setting up temporary sites like this until we can get stabilization back in the market. One of these sites or go to *** gas station, I would say right now, if you’ve got the financial means and you’ve got *** gas station that’s open next to you, that’s always going to be your best option. But if you’re in *** situation where you’re financially struggling and you need help now and I see *** car that’s being pushed up off to our left here, you know, you’re in that type of situation. This is the place you need to be. Can you also touch on your conversations with President Biden? What have they been? Has he said anything about coming to Florida to the damage? He didn’t say anything to me about it, but he basically said, you know, you guys are doing *** great job. We’re here for you if you need something, ask. And so we sent *** big request and we got approved for what we wanted. They’ve also been, I think, admirably flexible about, ok, we don’t want bureaucracy to stand in the way of helping people, you know, in Florida, look, we do things different. I mean, how the federal government normally operates and how we operate is just miles apart and, you know, sometimes FEMA does things and people, people get frustrated and that’s understandable, but sometimes it’s like, you know, you have all the bureaucracy. So it’s just like, ok, let’s try to clear that. So Kevin’s really been working, I think productively with the administrator of FEMA to say, let’s get this stuff going, let’s make sure we’re helping people and let’s not get mired in *** lot of the bureaucracy. And so I think that the administration has been receptive to that and that ultimately is going to be the way, you know, that you do. Like when we did this debris thing to help the Pinellas beaches, we didn’t worry about, you know, the reimbursement of fema. Now we did talk with FEMA parallel to us doing it and saying they should qualify and they have said that they are going to, that they’re going to qualify us for it. But I think what happens in some of the, some of the local governments will wait on debris removal until all the paperwork with this and you lose valuable time. So we don’t want to lose valuable time. We want to push out resources now. And I think we’re all singing on the same sheet of music on that. So I think it will be *** good thing. Former President Trump or vice President Pamela Harris, um, former President Trump, you know, he’s somebody that I’m in regular contact with just, you know, given his campaign and me being *** supporter and he’s has helped with, I think some of the linemen I think they housed *** couple 100 he sends his well wishes. But we’ve just, we’ve got *** lot more ahead of us. The fuel situation. This is good to have this here. There’s going to be more, I know we’ve got one in ST Pete man, you’re going to see Sarasota in Tampa, probably another one in Pinellas. But as we’re doing that, you’re also going to continue to see more stations get power back. And when we have *** station that has power, as Kevin said, that runs out, we’re getting fuel back there sometimes escorting with FHP, the fuel coming from the ports. But if we have some fuel on hand that we can dump into *** station, we’re willing to do that, we just want people to be able to get what they need. And so we’re being very nimble about how we approach this. So, ok, well, you’ll hear more from us on additional fuel sites. I know we have *** lot of pods open and if there’s *** demand for more, then we’ll go ahead and get more open as well. Thanks. All right. Thank you. Thank you for your, thank you. You get damaged in your place.

Governor to provide updates on recovery from Hurricane Milton

Updated: 12:25 PM EDT Oct 12, 2024

Governor Ron DeSantis provided updates on recovery efforts after Hurricane Milton impacted Florida this week.The governor was joined by Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie and Major General John D. Haas. The press conference was held Saturday morning in Plant City.Hurricane Milton made landfall around 8:30 p.m. Wednesday night near Siesta Key, Florida as a category 3 hurricane. Several people have been confirmed dead from the storm.Heavy flooding from Milton has impacted parts of Volusia County, and areas along the St. Johns River in Central Florida.The Tampa Bay area saw heavy wind-related damage, including toppled cranes and a destroyed roof at Tropicana Field.

PLANT CITY, Fla. —

Governor Ron DeSantis provided updates on recovery efforts after Hurricane Milton impacted Florida this week.

The governor was joined by Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie and Major General John D. Haas. The press conference was held Saturday morning in Plant City.

Hurricane Milton made landfall around 8:30 p.m. Wednesday night near Siesta Key, Florida as a category 3 hurricane. Several people have been confirmed dead from the storm.

Heavy flooding from Milton has impacted parts of Volusia County, and areas along the St. Johns River in Central Florida.

The Tampa Bay area saw heavy wind-related damage, including toppled cranes and a destroyed roof at Tropicana Field.