MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We just heard about the damage from Hurricane Milton - we got a view from on the ground. For more, we've got Colonel Brandon Bowman of the Army Corps of Engineers on the line. He is in Orlando, leading the Army Corps' response to Hurricane Milton. Good morning, Colonel.
BRANDON BOWMAN: Good morning. Thanks for having me on.
MARTIN: Thanks for coming. So I understand that you did a flyover yesterday over the Tampa area. Just as briefly as you can, what did you see?
BOWMAN: Well, we flew over the Tampa Bypass Canal, which helps convey water around Tampa itself, and looking to inspect the canal's integrity and to see if there's much debris. And the canal water was very clean, free of trees and branches. The canal seemed in fairly good condition. And looking out over the surrounding communities as we were flying, I did notice a lot of blown-down fences, some blown-down trees. But overall, the homes seemed to be in pretty good condition, based on the size of the storm that passed through the previous night.
MARTIN: Oh, wow. Oh, that's good to hear. So - but how does the damage compare to what you expected and prepared for? Because I know you did prepare.
BOWMAN: Well, it actually was less damage than I anticipated. I always like to plan for the worst-case scenario. And if I think a Cat 4 is going to hit, I always plus it up to one more storm level, to plan for the absolute worst. So we were planning for a possible 5 landfall. And getting a Category 3 landfall was great news, and severely lessened the damage and the cleanup that will have to happen.
MARTIN: Say more - a bit about the kinds of what your main missions are, if you would.
BOWMAN: We have two major missions. One is to support FEMA for disaster recovery, and the second one is for flood fight. And so with FEMA, as the state starts assessing and seeing where they need additional support, that can come to the federal government, to FEMA. And depending on the missions, if it's temporary roof, temp power, debris, critical public infrastructures, infrastructure assessments, they often turn to the Army Corps of Engineers. And we will put our teams into action and start helping the people of Florida. And for flood fight, we provide sandbags, super sacks, technical assistance, and we can even provide pumps to those communities that might need to help move water.
MARTIN: OK, so what are the priorities now?
BOWMAN: Priorities now are to liaise with all of the state of Florida and the most affected communities, see what they need the most, and be prepared to take on those missions. Right now, we're moving our power teams into the area to help with any temporary power missions. We are leaning heavily forward for temporary roof. Many people know them as blue roofs. So we're moving those assets in. We moved additional pumps into the state. They'll be arriving this weekend to help with any additional flood fight that's needed. And just yesterday, we helped the local Water Management District by loaning them some of our pumps to help them convey water.
MARTIN: So you were appointed commander of the Jacksonville District just a few months ago, in July, for a three-year post. And of course, I appreciate that everybody is still focused on this season's hurricanes, which were back to back. As we've just said, these two big ones were back to back. But in the time we have left, can you just tell us about how you're thinking about preparing for future seasons? We heard from Representative Kathy Castor yesterday, for example, who represents the - part of her district is the Tampa area, and she called this the new abnormal. So how are you preparing for what might be coming next?
BOWMAN: Well, at the end of every hurricane season, we do a review of how we performed the previous year, and we use that to direct our training and planning for the following year. And at the start of every hurricane season, we do what we call tabletop exercises, where we kind of simulate a hurricane strike in each of our districts and then we plan our response. We do it on paper. We move the assets around. And we talk through where the friction might be, and what we could do better this year than we did last year. And for Hurricane Milton, we thought it was going to look a lot like Hurricane Ian. So we reached back into our records and pulled the Hurricane Ian kind of playbook forward, and we used that heavily to influence how we were preparing for Hurricane Milton.
MARTIN: That is Colonel Brandon Bowman. He's leading the response to Hurricane Milton in Florida for the Army Corps of Engineers. Colonel Bowman, thank you so much for talking with us. I know you're crazy busy, so I'm going to let you get back to work, but thank you so much for talking with us.
BOWMAN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
