ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Today, crews across Florida have been assessing the damage from Hurricane Milton. Sarasota County, just south of Tampa Bay, took a direct hit from the eye of the Category 3 storm last night. And this morning, the city of Sarasota urged people to conserve drinking water because of the many water line breaks. They have closed access to the coastal barrier islands while search-and-rescue missions take place.
Genevieve Judge is a spokesperson for Sarasota County and is on the phone with us now. Thank you for taking the time.
GENEVIEVE JUDGE: Absolutely. Thanks for having us. Appreciate it.
SHAPIRO: What have you been hearing from the teams that are out doing damage assessments today?
JUDGE: So first thing this morning, actually overnight, before the sun came up here in Sarasota County, we had our TFIT teams. Those are our Tactical First-In Teams of first responders that were able to get eyes and boots on the ground to assess damage throughout Sarasota County. So right now, what we're focusing on is clearing debris, clearing roadways, clearing trees so our community and our residents are able to get back home. We're also working on setting up points of distribution. Those will be points of distribution that are set up throughout Sarasota County that individuals will be able to go to to get supplies, to get food, to get water.
And we're going to continue to assess the damage because, while this wasn't the Category 5 that Hurricane Milton was at one point, it did come across Siesta Key with winds of about 120 miles an hour. So we do have significant damage throughout Sarasota County, and we continue to assess that this afternoon.
SHAPIRO: You're talking about allowing people to get back home. What about people who stayed behind? Do you know about the health and well-being of people who did not evacuate?
JUDGE: As far as at this point in time, you know, we have cleared out our calls for service that happened overnight. You know, and thankfully, because of what I think our community saw during Hurricane Helene and that storm surge that hit the barrier islands - we had forecasted between 6 and 8 feet of storm surge during Hurricane Helene, which was just two weeks ago - this hurricane was forecasted to have double that. And while we don't know exactly at this point just how much storm surge we received, because it was forecasted to be double what we saw two weeks ago, our community heeded that warning...
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
JUDGE: ...And left. And for those that didn't, thankfully, at this point, I am not aware of any major injuries or any deaths as a result of it at this point.
SHAPIRO: That's really good to hear. Between the wind, the rain, the storm surge, the tornadoes, what appears to have had the greatest impact on your county?
JUDGE: You know, first thing, we saw a major power outage for a majority of our county. At one point this morning, we were seeing between 80- and 90% of Sarasota County without power. That's a significant amount of our community, and we know that they are anxious to get back online, to get that internet, that cable, that power restored and to get back to a sense of normalcy. And like I mentioned, we went through Hurricane Helene two weeks ago. Not long before that was Hurricane Debby. So our community has been through quite a lot since the beginning of August, with three hurricanes now. And we know that our community is tired, we know that they're weary and they're anxious, but this is a resilient community, and this is a community that helps each other, even when we're down. So we continue to hear stories of neighbors helping neighbors and community members checking on community members to make sure that everybody's OK.
SHAPIRO: I mentioned the water line breaks. You talked about the widespread power outages. And as you said, this comes right after Helene. Do you have a timeline for when people might be able to get back into their homes, get the power and the water back on?
JUDGE: You know, we have been - as soon as the wind subsided and it was safe for first responders to get back out, we were out in the darkness of the overnight, trying to work to get folks back online. The problem that we're running into now is power. If there is not power to lift stations and different utilities, unfortunately, it causes a delay in trying to get folks back online. So right now, we're working on reestablishing that normalcy, working on services such as utilities and water.
And so, you know, we know that our community has been through this before, and we appreciate their patience. And we know that this is hard. And we know that lives were changed as a result of Hurricane Helene, and now those lives have been changed again as a result of Milton. And so our community is tired, but we're strong. And we're working together and as quickly as we can to get folks back online.
SHAPIRO: That is Genevieve Judge, public information and community outreach manager for Sarasota County. Thank you so much for joining us.
JUDGE: I appreciate the time. Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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