St. Petersburg mayor says 'most impact' coming from storm surge as Hurricane Idalia slams Florida

Transcript

00:00 And Mayor Ken Welch of St. Petersburg is joining me now for more on this storm.

00:04 Mayor Welch, I know some areas in St. Petersburg are under evacuation orders.

00:07 What are you seeing in those areas and what are you telling those residents?

00:11 Thank you, Diane. It's good to be with you.

00:13 Well, as Paul and Rob reported, I think the significant thing for me is this storm is so large.

00:19 Paul was up in Perry, I believe, some 250 miles from St. Petersburg, Tampa area.

00:27 Yet we're still seeing impacts in terms of rain and thunderstorm bands.

00:32 But really the thing we're concerned about is the storm surge.

00:36 We've received over more than four feet of storm surge already.

00:40 And as the high tide comes in this afternoon, about 2 p.m., we expect that to increase.

00:45 And that's where most of our impact is coming from.

00:48 Street flooding. We've had some high water rescues.

00:51 All three bridges that lead to St. Petersburg and Pinellas County.

00:55 We are a peninsula within a peninsula.

00:58 And all three of the bridges coming into our community are shut down now because of wind and flooding.

01:03 So the water is really our concern.

01:05 And this is much more of an impact to our community than Ian had in terms of storm impact, storm surge impact.

01:15 And I know you're talking about the water and the surge. You already have some flooding in areas.

01:19 What are you seeing there?

01:21 We're seeing flooding in our low lying areas, areas that were evacuated, our level A areas.

01:27 But it is more intense than we've seen recently.

01:30 I've already had an anecdotal report of someone that's been in an area 18 years and has never seen the water that high.

01:37 And again, we're still expecting the rest of the storm surge impact later this afternoon.

01:43 So we were concerned about that when we had a prediction of four to seven feet of storm surge.

01:49 And that is what seems to be happening right now.

01:54 So hopefully folks heeded the warning, moved to higher ground.

01:58 And right now we're trying to help those folks that we can get to with high water rescues.

02:03 And Mayor, what's your message not only to members of your community, but what do you also want to say to the rest of the country?

02:10 That it's a new game in terms of extreme weather.

02:15 These storms are more powerful. They move more quickly.

02:18 We have less time to react. And the science has told us that the sea level rise and those impacts will produce exactly what we're seeing.

02:27 More impact, greater impact from storm surge.

02:30 And we're seeing high water in areas that we've never seen it before.

02:36 And now you've got an area of Big Ben that hasn't been hit by a storm directly in decades.

02:42 And our good, good friends in Perry and Tallahassee, Leon County, Taylor County, that area.

02:48 Are now having to deal with that. So we just need to pay attention to the science, do our preparation, and that'll get us through this.

02:55 All right. Mayor of St. Petersburg, Ken Welch. Mayor Welch, we appreciate your time today.

02:59 Thank you and good luck. Thank you. Appreciate it, Diane.

03:04 Hi, everyone. George Stephanopoulos here. Thanks for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel.

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03:17 Thanks for watching.

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