It’s hard, but we will continue to recover as a community, and we will do everything in our power to continue restoration efforts for our residents,
I feel like a lot of us know what to do now,
This is one of the biggest storms we’ve ever had,
This is the fourth hurricane to make landfall on the Gulf Coast this year. This has happened only five other times in history,
The Skyway Bridge and the Howard Frankland Bridge are both CLOSED due to high winds and storm surge. Motorists should stay off the highways,
Water beginning to come over walls off the beach in Indian Shores,
This curfew helps protect first responders and citizens of our community as conditions are still very hazardous. Please shelter in place,
If you are trapped and need help, please call for rescuers – DO NOT TRY TO TREAD FLOODWATERS YOURSELF,
Tropical storms and hurricanes require several ingredients to get stronger. First, there needs to be warm ocean waters, warmer than about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The evaporation of this warm water provides the energy a tropical cyclone needs to strengthen,
This rainfall will likely result in catastrophic and potentially life-threatening flash and urban flooding, along with significant river flooding. Numerous significant landslides are expected in steep terrain across the southern Appalachians,
Second, the vertical wind shear cannot be too large, which can otherwise tilt a tropical cyclone. Third, the environment needs to be moist, which helps thunderstorms to grow and be sustained,
A catastrophic and deadly storm surge is occurring along portions of the Florida Big Bend coast, where inundation could reach as high as 20 feet above ground level, along with destructive waves. There is also a danger of life-threatening storm surge along the remainder of the west coast of the Florida Peninsula,
Helene continues to move inland over central Georgia and is producing hurricane-force winds and heavy rainfall. This is a dangerous and life-threatening situation. Persons should not leave their shelters and remain in place, staying away from windows,
Right now the sun is starting to rise, we’re starting to get the first glimpse of what we actually have laying on the ground and what we’re going to be dealing with. We have helpers everywhere now doing the first push through to try to see what we need to do to clear these roads to get assets and resources in here that we desperately need to serve our communities,
I just hope that when we finally discover what we’re dealing with that we don’t have a big loss of life,
When the sun comes up this morning we’ll see what the damage is, but we believe it’s devastating.”
The pictures I saw, the I videos saw last night were just devastating along Clearwater Beach, along all of our beaches here in Tampa Bay. I know from our fire and police that we had some homes burn to the ground out on the island, there were some folks that we just couldn’t get to because of high waters to rescue,
Flash flooding is ongoing or expected to begin shortly,
Last night it was a historic storm surge. We saw things out there in the flooding that people who have lived out there their entire lives have never seen. We did our best and it breaks the heart of our first responders when they can’t get through high water to rescue folks,
We’re under orders, but I’m going to stay right here at the house,