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.
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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.