Up to 40 million people are expected to be impacted by Hurricane Helene when the storm makes landfall on Sept. 26. Leslie Hudson reports from Tampa where a hospital is ramping up storm preparations.
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00:00It's been a pretty busy morning here, of course, the hospital getting ready for
00:04Haleen and this is a level one critical care hospital so it's very important that operations
00:09run as normal as possible and one of the reasons they can run normal or as close as normal as you
00:14can when a hurricane is going to be paralleling your city is what you see over here. These are
00:19called aquifenses and this is the fourth year the hospital has used the aquifense to help mitigate
00:25flooding around the perimeter of the hospital. It's worked very successfully for them over the
00:30last couple of years. They were the first hospital in the country to use this aquifense. It is a very
00:36powerful tool in helping the hospital to maintain normal operations. We shot some video earlier
00:42today. This is a three-day process and the workers were out today doing some more of the wall. Now
00:48they're going to continue to work on the wall in stages. Tomorrow they'll do their last touches
00:53to get the last piece of that fence up so that the employees can come and go as they need to go
00:59when their shifts come and go. Families can come into the hospital and operations will continue
01:04as normal. Now last year Adalia did not make a direct impact here in Tampa but they did get some
01:09impacts. They did see some low-level flooding. We talked to the director of operations that's in
01:14charge of putting these fences up and he explained how this all works and how much wind these fences
01:20can withstand. So they're designed for 130 mile an hour winds and these panels here are the tallest
01:29that they make. They're nine feet tall so nine feet of water which we're about eight feet above
01:35sea level right where we're standing so that's about 17 feet in total for this part of the
01:40campus. And is this considered the most vulnerable part where we are right now? It's certainly the
01:44lowest part. I think you know when you're looking at a perimeter of a building every part's a
01:50vulnerability but in terms of the amount of water the most water would be here.
01:57So last year with Hurricane Adalia they got a storm surge in this area around four to seven
02:03feet. With Helene the storm surge is expected to be five to eight feet or even higher so there is
02:09some concern there will be some low-lying flooding. They did get about a two to three foot surge here
02:15at the hospital right where I shot that interview. So they are expecting inundation
02:20even though Helene stays well away from the Tampa area. The larger concern of course is high tide
02:25which will be around 11 p.m. as Adalia or excuse me as Helene gets to its closest point to Tampa.
02:32So again that southwest wind flow could be a major problem for the surge in this area. The hospital
02:38not so much again they've mitigated the problem with the fencing but there is the concern for
02:44that storm surge in the surrounding area and there is a mandatory evacuation here in Hillsborough
02:48County where we are for zone A. That is the immediate coastline that's also true for Pinellas
02:54and also Manatee and several of the Sarasota County. Many of the counties here are under
02:58that mandatory evacuation for zone A along the immediate coastline. So folks are expecting to
03:03see some inundations some storm surge here at the hospital. They'll continue their operations
03:08and should have everything zipped up and ready to roll when Helene comes by tomorrow.