Speaker 1: We're launching this podcast to give you updated headlines and
Speaker 1: stories as we have them from across the Southeast in
Speaker 1: this critical time. Hopefully this will be helpful to you
Speaker 1: and your family. I'm Rory O'Neill. When Hurricane Dorian stalled
Speaker 1: over the Bahamas for two days, it just pounded the
Speaker 1: area with wind gusts over two hundred miles an hour
Speaker 1: and feet of rain, And after skirting the Florida coast
Speaker 1: and clipping the Carolinas, the storm is on the move
Speaker 1: now moving over twenty miles an hour away from the
Speaker 1: US towards Canada and finally just falling apart. But as
Speaker 1: Dorian moves away, we're getting a better look at what's
Speaker 1: been left behind in the Bahamas again and everybody set
Speaker 1: up in the ceiling for two days of water in
Speaker 1: my house. I right now I'm added into the city
Speaker 1: of refuge, So keep us in the Bahamas. Everybody's like
Speaker 1: in a state of shop right now. We lost everything,
Speaker 1: So right now we just say, right now, one guy
Speaker 1: has more experience cleaning up after a hurricane than any other,
Speaker 1: Craig few Gap. He used to run emergency management for
Speaker 1: the State of Florida. That was during the busy hurricane
Speaker 1: seasons of two thousand four and two thousand five. Oh
Speaker 1: five was the year they ran out of letters at
Speaker 1: the National Hurricane Center. So after working in Tallahassee, he
Speaker 1: was tapped by President Obama to be his FEMA director,
Speaker 1: And there were plenty of disasters on his watch then too,
Speaker 1: but few. Gate, former firefighter, is a tough love kind
Speaker 1: of a guy. He'll tell it to you straight and
Speaker 1: he won't sugarcoat it. People think you're gonna get everything done.
Speaker 1: It's a disaster folks. Right now. We're just trying to
Speaker 1: keep them a lot. They're not happy because they don't
Speaker 1: have eyes. Good if they're not happy, they're breathing, they
Speaker 1: have an airway, they're communicating, and they're alive. I have
Speaker 1: a acomplished my primary goal. That's from a speech that
Speaker 1: Fegate gave to Verizon workers. But he's been in the
Speaker 1: field plenty too, in situations like Hurricane Maria, when the
Speaker 1: death toll kept climbing, reaching about three thousand a quarter
Speaker 1: to some reports. And I think that's the thing you
Speaker 1: have to focus on, is what are we counting h
Speaker 1: If you look at just direct impacts in Florida, we
Speaker 1: had fewer people killed by the storms than we did
Speaker 1: had dying after the storm. When you look at what
Speaker 1: happened to Maria, you look at the disruption of infrastructure,
Speaker 1: people cut off, running out of critical supplies, running out
Speaker 1: of critical medical equipment, not being able to get access
Speaker 1: to medical equipment and proper treatments. That death toll makes sense.
Speaker 1: It's how we count. And I think the sematics doesn't
Speaker 1: really do justice to the lives loss and more importantly,
Speaker 1: why did people die? Because if we don't understand that
Speaker 1: lesson of what we can do differently, we're not going
Speaker 1: to change the outcome in the future. And Puerto Ricans
Speaker 1: feared a repeat of Hurricane Maria as Hurricane Dorian came
Speaker 1: charging towards their small island, But instead Dorian slipped by
Speaker 1: hid in the island with just thirty mile winds and
Speaker 1: three to four inches of rain, causing no real damage
Speaker 1: at all. And that's why forecasters have that cone of uncertainty.
Speaker 1: It's a way to hedge their bets in case some
Speaker 1: system decides to make a quick turn to the left
Speaker 1: or right, north or south. I remember back in two
Speaker 1: thousand four, Hurricane Charlie was making a Bee Line towards
Speaker 1: what was supposed to be Tampa Bay. I was standing
Speaker 1: there waiting for the storm to arrive late at night
Speaker 1: Friday of August, as a matter of fact, in St.
Speaker 1: Pete Beach in the dark with some blustery winds, and
Speaker 1: doesn't Charlie go and take a sudden turn to the right.
Speaker 1: At the time, I had a house in Orlando. In fact,
Speaker 1: I had just bought it and hadn't even made my
Speaker 1: first mortgage payment. So here I am standing in St.
Speaker 1: Pete Beach, drives a bone and now my house is
Speaker 1: getting hit with winds of a hundred miles an hour.
Speaker 1: I hadn't even taken time to bring in the grill
Speaker 1: or a potted plant because the storm wasn't supposed to
Speaker 1: go that way at all. So and I made the
Speaker 1: harrowing drive back through the storm along Interstate four to
Speaker 1: get back to my house. Sun was coming up just
Speaker 1: as I got there. I remember pulling into the driveway
Speaker 1: seeing shingles all over my lawn, and really I just
Speaker 1: almost was in tears at that point. So as I
Speaker 1: looked at those shingles on the lawn and where they
Speaker 1: had hit the house and left some pock marks, and
Speaker 1: scratch marks all along the paint. I noticed that the
Speaker 1: tiles were brown, and then I looked up and I
Speaker 1: realized the tiles on my roof were black. My roof
Speaker 1: was fine. It was the neighbor's roof who was gone.
Speaker 1: But I hadn't prepared, and in the end just got
Speaker 1: pretty lucky because my house wasn't damaged by Hurricane Charlie.
Speaker 1: Plenty of others were like the neighbor who had to
Speaker 1: get a whole new roof, and I didn't even lose
Speaker 1: power in our neighborhood. I was the envy of actually
Speaker 1: everyone I knew, since Hurricane Charlie knocked out power for
Speaker 1: weeks to some folks had friends coming over to my
Speaker 1: house just to do the laundry, and we had cookouts
Speaker 1: just so they could get some refrigeration and air conditioning.
Speaker 1: That's something else you don't think of when a hurricane
Speaker 1: rolls around. After it knocks out the power, there you
Speaker 1: are in that floorida heat, usually over at ninety degrees,
Speaker 1: with humidity, no electricity, and a lot of sweat because
Speaker 1: there's no air conditioning. And yes, you can groan about it,
Speaker 1: but it's actually dangerous too. Just a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: It was a different hurricane that knocked out the power
Speaker 1: in Fort Lauderdale. That's where a nursing home lost power
Speaker 1: and fourteen people died. The medical examiner blamed twelve of
Speaker 1: those deaths on the heat because there was no generator,
Speaker 1: no backup, no plan B Now, for people who work
Speaker 1: at that nursing home or facing criminal charges, it could
Speaker 1: be well over a year before those cases actually go
Speaker 1: to trial if they do. And the state did pass
Speaker 1: new regulations requiring nursing homes to have backup systems, either
Speaker 1: generators or plans to evacuate residents just in case the
Speaker 1: power goes out and there's no more a c A
Speaker 1: lot of nursing homes have complied, but others are asking
Speaker 1: for a delay and many patients are still vulnerable. It's
Speaker 1: something the state of Florida still grapples with. In North Carolina,
Speaker 1: some of the building restrictions that were put into place
Speaker 1: after earlier hurricanes are being eased. They may be having
Speaker 1: second thoughts now after Hurricane Dorian clipped a patteris with
Speaker 1: wind gusts around ninety miles an hour. The damage assessments
Speaker 1: will be coming out in the next day or so,
Speaker 1: but there will be lots of beach erosion and lots
Speaker 1: of clean up to perform. Disaster planning can be complicated.
Speaker 1: It's easy when it's a family of four and their
Speaker 1: solid incomes. They have that SUV. They can load up
Speaker 1: and go to a friend's house or book a hotel
Speaker 1: a hundred miles away and be just fine. They're easy.
Speaker 1: But what happens when people have extended relatives who need
Speaker 1: medical care, a baby and infant, someone who's pregnant, someone
Speaker 1: with diabetes or another chronic condition, maybe being on oxygen,
Speaker 1: have to have electricity all the time, And what do
Speaker 1: you do about the family dog, the family cat, the
Speaker 1: family fish, maybe a turtle, maybe a ferret, maybe even
Speaker 1: a horse. That's more common than you think. And evacuating
Speaker 1: isn't always cheap. You assume a person has a car,
Speaker 1: maybe they need public transportation, Maybe they have no where
Speaker 1: else to go, maybe their new in town. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: maybe there are just endless possibilities. And these are endless
Speaker 1: concerns faced by emergency managers at the local level every
Speaker 1: time there's this warm just like Hurricane Dorian. Look at
Speaker 1: the situation now in the Bahamas. Thousands of people, perhaps
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of people permanently homeless. Where do they go?
Speaker 1: The United States is just a short flight away, but
Speaker 1: who pays? Do you let them in the country? Do
Speaker 1: they even have a photo? I d And do you
Speaker 1: break up a family because one member does and a
Speaker 1: child does not? The point is, disasters are not one
Speaker 1: size fits all, and while it's good to give a
Speaker 1: case of water or donate diapers or other baby supplies,
Speaker 1: that barely scratches the surface. And there are always new
Speaker 1: disasters and new distractions. You may have forgotten. It was
Speaker 1: only a year ago that the Florida Pamhandle was battered
Speaker 1: by Hurricane Michael, another Cat five storm system. The area
Speaker 1: near Mexico Beach essentially flattened and needs a total rebuild.
Speaker 1: But it's not in the headlines much anymore, and next
Speaker 1: week marks the peak of the hurricane season. There's a
Speaker 1: lot more to go. The annual storm season runs through
Speaker 1: No will continue to update this feed with stories on
Speaker 1: Hurricane Dorian until then, Stay safe. I'm Rory O'Neill.