Gabrielle Russon
Gov. Ron DeSantis is traveling across the state Friday surveying Hurricane Helene’s devastating impact in St. Petersburg and Taylor County before returning to Tampa Bay on Saturday.
DeSantis gave an update Friday afternoon from Pinellas County where the community is dealing with historic flooding and 200,000 people are still without power as of 12:30 p.m.
Hurricane Helene made landfall Thursday night as a Category 4 storm that is responsible for at least 26 deaths across the U.S. The hurricane’s 140 mph winds unleashed a storm surge that went as high as 20 feet in the areas hit hardest.
“You’ve seen a lot of major surge. You’ve seen a lot of water damage. … Once you get past the Big Bend coast, you got a lot of wind damage,” DeSantis said at Friday’s press conference. “We’re going to be down on the ground in Perry and some of those places later today, but the reports we’ve gotten from those parts of the state was the areas that were hit in (Hurricane) Idalia and Debby, that this was more extensive than both combined.”
Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie urged flood victims to take pictures of the water marks outside and inside their homes for their National Flood Insurance Claims or any other insurance claims.
Guthrie said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator will be in Florida later today and that the state is working to get an expedited major disaster declaration request.
“Hopefully we’ll get a very, very quick response from FEMA,” he said.
The maximum award for a FEMA grant is usually “around $70,000 give or take,” Guthrie’s message was during the press conference. “The average payout in Florida usually is around $5,000 to $7,000. That is not going to make you whole. I want to set that expectation right now.”
DeSantis thanked first responders for working “in the dead of the night” and taking distress calls during the storm.
“This is a resilient part of our state, and we’re going to bounce back,” DeSantis said. “We’re going to get people back on their feet.”
9 comments
The Sage "E"
September 27, 2024 at 4:23 pm
Good evening America,
STAND BY FOR SAGE WISDOM:
Here at the “E” Poly-Sci Division we did some accurate polling of past 8iden voters and found that 67.64% of past 8iden voters are so impressed with watching how Ron Desantis handles an emergency as Significant as Hurricane Preperation and Recovery that they have switched their POTUS vote to Trump just to “Set The Table” (as Rush used to say) to clear the path for Ron & The Beautiful Casey’s 2 term POTUS wins in 2028 & 2032.
AND THAT IS “THE REST OF THE STORY:
Thank you America,
The Sage “E” [FKA ELVIS – FKA EARL PITTS AMERICAN]
The Blue Wave is Coming!
September 27, 2024 at 5:35 pm
Wonder if we will get public records on this travel or if that will be illegally withheld from the public. Gotta love the repooplican “common sense” nonsense.
Cheesy Floridian
September 27, 2024 at 6:48 pm
Prob not
A Day without MAGA
September 28, 2024 at 4:39 am
Another tropical storm as early as next Saturday,in the same Big Bend area of Florida ,he better speed up recovery faster, before this storm roll in next Saturday
Tom Palmer
September 27, 2024 at 7:56 pm
To be fair, in recent days he was actually acting like a governor.
Linwood Wright
September 27, 2024 at 9:28 pm
I hope he didn’t forget his spectacular Go-Go boots at home.
Josh Green
September 27, 2024 at 9:45 pm
And he’s going to get on his knees and beg Brandon for some of that sweet socialist Federal disaster relief money.
A Day without MAGA
September 28, 2024 at 6:23 am
Storm no misery,it seem the Gulf is ramping up to finish out the season at record pace , Florida may he impacted by 3 more major storm, before election day,do the state have a contingency plan,if a hurricane come on election day,this why a campaign should have their own meteorologist to get their voter to the poll on election day
Ron Ogden
September 28, 2024 at 7:05 am
It may be time to start thinking about reducing the intensity of development along the barrier islands. It would be a costly project, but if we have entered an era of increasingly frequent and powerful Gulf storms it might be worth considering.
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