Some 300,000 utility customer remained without power in the western Florida Panhandle two days after Hurricane Isaias hit — the majority of them customers of Florida Power & Light, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sunday.
Meanwhile the scope of damage was becoming clearer. Most of the destruction came not on the coast, which saw less storm surge than expected, but rather in north Santa Rosa and Escambia counties, where powerful winds lifted roofs off structures.
“Normally, you would think right there on the coast would be the worst. Here, you see that go inland,” DeSantis said during a news conference outside a Waffle House in Milton.
“So, as these storms go, those are very strong wind gusts for being this far inland. But I definitely think Santa Rosa, they have the highest percentage of power outages. I’m sure they have a high percentage compared to the other areas of downed power lines and poles, and I know we’re working with the utilities for them to help get those back up as soon as possible,” he continued.
Appearing with DeSantis were U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody, appointed by DeSantis and running for election in her own right against Democrat Angie Nixon. Also there was Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson, who said employees of his agency were helping with cleanup.
Santa Rosa County Sheriff Bob Johnson said there’d been no looting.
Isaias made landfall near Destin, around 50 miles east of Pensacola, about 8:30 p.m. Central time Friday with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph.
On Saturday, residents marveled to a Phoenix reporter at their good luck, relatively.
“I thought it was going to be worse,” Ted Wolford said, pointing to the three spots in his yard that had previously been occupied trees he’d lost in earlier storms.
A city park was covered with pine needles and tree limbs and sheriff’s deputies were directing traffic at busy intersections, other lights powered by generators. Generators were still running traffic lights on Sunday, and state troopers were directing traffic too, DeSantis said.
A walk through a Destin park was accompanied by a hum of generators from neighbors.
The Publix and Target parking lots were busy. It was a calm, 74 degree evening.
Power
As for power restoration, “if you’re without and you’re FPL, you may get it today, a lot of people will get it today. Others will get it tomorrow. And if anything goes beyond that, it’s because there’s some extenuating circumstances in terms of needing to rebuild some of the infrastructure,” DeSantis said.
“Now, as it happens, most of the schools in Northwest Florida were already scheduled to be off for Columbus Day, which is tomorrow. And many of them, Tuesday is a teacher planning day. So, keying in on that Wednesday to get the schools back, I think that’s gonna be possible for the vast, vast, vast majority of schools.”
“Our Florida public power crews were called on to assist other utilities with power restoration efforts in affected areas, including Florida co-op electric utilities and out-of-state municipal electric utilities in Alabama,” said Amy Zubaly, executive director of the Florida Municipal Electric Association.
“Enabled by our mutual aid agreements, eight Florida Municipal Electric Association members are assisting a Florida electric cooperative in Northwest Florida, and another five public power utilities have assisted with power restoration efforts in six Alabama cities.”
The state is trying to learn the scale of the harm to businesses through a survey, available at FloridaDisaster.biz. An emergency program offers zero-interest bridge loans of up to $100,000 for agriculture and aquaculture and $150,000 for citrus and cattle operations. Applications are available at Floridajobs.org/EBL, Floridajobs.org/EBL.
“We’re monitoring rising water levels along the Blackwater and Shoal rivers, particularly near U.S. 90 and I-10, in the Crestview area, that flooding could impact roadways,” the governor said.
“Hopefully, it wouldn’t get to the point where it would be dangerous for folks to even remain in their homes, but that has happened in the past in different storms, and so that’s why we’re keeping all of our search and rescue personnel on standby in case their services are needed.”
Deaths
The death toll Florida remained at two DeSantis said— one a woman killed when a tree fell on her house and another from fumes from a generator operating inside a garage.
“We have not gotten any more reports for any additional fatalities,” DeSantis said. “I would just urge people to be very careful. There’s a lot of debris out there, particularly as you get into the northern part of the Panhandle. A lot of trees knocked down. A lot of hazards. There may be still power lines knocked down.”
Authorities received “not a huge number of 911 calls compared to past storms,” the governor noted.
“We did not have to mobilize air assets for search and rescue, and that’s ultimately a good thing. We had the assets ready, didn’t end up having to deploy them, at least not yet. Hopefully, we don’t have a lot of bad flooding come on the heels of this.”
DeSantis said he’s heard carping about deploying assets that in the end weren’t needed.
“So, somebody, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have spent money by bringing the guard or doing this. You didn’t need them.’ Well, you don’t know that. You don’t know that before the storm happens. So, our view is kind of bring overwhelming power to these things. Use whatever we need, including everything, if you need to,” he said.
