• 7 months ago
The mayor of Tallahassee, Florida, joined AccuWeather on May 14 to discuss how the city is bouncing back from severe storms that did more damage than any recent hurricanes.
Transcript
00:00 One of the areas that have been hit hard hit is Tallahassee.
00:04 Yeah, take a look at this.
00:06 Boy, still some addresses without power this morning, Brie.
00:10 Yeah, right in the Tallahassee area, all of those power outages being reported.
00:14 Over 12,000 customers still dealing with these repercussions.
00:18 Yeah, and again, cleanup has been underway ever since.
00:21 This all comes again as we're monitoring a new round of showers and thunderstorms now
00:27 east of Tallahassee this morning, but as we've been talking about, some more thunderstorms
00:31 on the way.
00:32 All right, Tallahassee Mayor John Daly spoke with us on Friday.
00:35 He joins us again here this morning from Tallahassee.
00:41 And Mr. Mayor, thank you so much for joining us.
00:45 What a line of thunderstorms.
00:46 We're watching that on AccuWeather early this morning.
00:49 Last week, we watched that line.
00:51 Boy, it strengthened right over you.
00:53 And after the wind gusts that we did see, how is the city doing with not only that round
01:00 of severe weather, but the recent severe weather over the last 24 hours?
01:04 Well, good morning, and I appreciate the opportunity to come on the show.
01:08 First of all, let me just tell you, I'm so proud of the great men and women of the City
01:11 of Tallahassee Utility Department, our first responders, everyone that's playing a role
01:15 in the rebuilding of our community, Leon County, the state of Florida.
01:19 But we do have a lot of work to do.
01:21 We confirmed that we had two EF2 tornadoes and one EF1 tornado rip through Tallahassee.
01:28 That is historic.
01:31 We've had more storm damage than we've had in the past three hurricanes in the past decade.
01:36 So we are in the process.
01:37 Now, having said that, we have quadrupled our workforce in the electric utility.
01:42 I believe we're at about 92, 93% restoration.
01:45 We are concentrating on those hard-hit areas right now, but it is devastating.
01:50 It's going to take some time.
01:51 Now, as far as the city is concerned, Mr. Mayor, is it certain spots of the city, or
01:56 is it just kind of sporadic throughout the city as those line of thunderstorms came on
02:00 through as far as the damage is concerned?
02:03 No, we had damage all over the city, but the worst damage was obviously the path of the
02:07 tornadoes themselves.
02:09 And it did a lot of damage, a lot of damage in Tallahassee.
02:14 You go to some of the neighborhoods that were in the path of the tornadoes, and the debris
02:17 is stacked 10 feet tall with the trees down and the limbs down.
02:22 I think you're showing some great video right now of the destruction that took place.
02:26 So while we did have power outages all over, the concentration of the storm, the most damage
02:32 took place in the path of the tornadoes.
02:35 Certainly there's been problem with the wind.
02:37 Can you speak to at least, can you speak as far as the flooding that you had in the city?
02:42 Was it mostly wind?
02:43 And how are you preparing as we move forward as the flood risk starts to increase later
02:48 this week?
02:50 So the storm event that caused so much damage is a wind event for us.
02:55 It is not a water event per se.
02:57 Now, just as you have mentioned, we have thunderstorms rolling through, and in the past 48 hours
03:03 it was predicted we could have taken as much as two to five inches of rain.
03:07 A water event on top of a wind event can wreak some havoc.
03:10 And so we take all the necessary precautions, make sure that we work with the residents,
03:14 our neighborhoods, our businesses, that everybody's safe and dry.
03:18 And you know, we have a saying here that we're Tallahassee strong and we're going to make
03:22 it and we will.
03:24 But it's going to take a little bit of time to build back.
03:26 Well, you're talking about the residents of Tallahassee.
03:29 Now, what should the residents do today and for the coming weeks to stay safe?
03:35 What is your thoughts or your advice to your residents moving forward here?
03:41 Well, for a lot of residents, we're getting back to life to normal.
03:45 You know, kids are going back to school, although school is out today, but going back to work
03:49 and trying to finish up the school year.
03:51 I remind everyone constantly that we are only three weeks away from hurricane season.
03:56 Now is the time to prepare.
03:58 Make sure that you have all your provisions that you need so that you and your family
04:01 and friends are safe for future storms.
04:04 But at the same time, we are still in the middle of a cleanup right now.
04:08 So I need everybody to take a deep breath.
04:10 I need patience.
04:12 We need grace.
04:13 But we also need everyone to kind of stay out of the way of the hot spots where the
04:16 crews are unpingaling the power lines from the trees.
04:20 Let them do their job so that we can get power restored as quickly as possible.
04:24 Tallahassee, Florida Mayor John Daly, Mr. Mayor, thank you so much for joining us.
04:28 And yeah, you're right.
04:29 Hey, listen, you're in harm's way a lot.
04:31 We have the severe weather and as you mentioned, hurricane season not far away.
04:35 But as you said, you're Tallahassee strong.
04:38 Thanks for joining us this morning, sir.

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