Florida - Monday September 26, 2022: The Florida National Guard has been mobilized, power crews are on standby, and food, fuel and medical resources are being stockpiled to deal with the storm as it passes and restore services once Hurricane Ian has gone.
Governor DeSantis detailed those preparations during a briefing Monday. “The Florida National Guard has activated five-thousand Florida Guardsmen, as well as two-thousand additional Guardsmen from Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina that have been activated to help.”
The Tampa Bay area is the focus of attention at this time Resources are being pre-positioned to coop with emergencies during the storm and deal with the damage afterwards.
“We’ve deployed 210 medical professionals to Hillsborough County special needs shelters, and another 120 to surrounding counties. We have 300 ambulances supporting special needs evacuations in the Tampa Bay area. And hundreds of generators and pumps have also been staged in the Tampa Bay area to prepare for the flooding that we’re anticipating.”
The major west coast utility companies are also on standby. “FP&L, Duke Energy, TECO, the municipal electrical providers, as well as the rural electrical co-ops. There are tens of thousands of people that are staged and that are going to be ready to go when the storm passes to try to get power restored.”
And as mandatory and voluntary evacuations continue along portions of the west coast, highway tolls have been suspended to easy the traffic flow out of the area.
“We want everybody to be safe. We want people to weather the storm," said the Governor. "Property damage, it’s terrible that that would happen, but we can fix that, and we can help re-build. But you got to take care of yourself, and that ultimately is the most important thing.”