Practice coronavirus mitigation measures. Good afternoon. Head out to to survey the damage from hurricane delta. Before i left, i wanted to give you a brief statement, an overview of what we know. First of all, hurricane delta as forecasted made landfall last night near cleo, louisiana. Only about 12 miles east of where hurricane laura made landfall. It made landfall as a category two, and the forecast appears to have been quite accurate as it relates to the surge, the wind and rain. The highest rainfall totals were in lake charles, over 15 minutes in the last 48 hours. In baton rouge, they received over 10 inches of rain in the same time. Obviously this was a very big storm, even if it wasnt quite as powerful as hurricane laura, it was much bigger. While the impacts were evidenced across a large portion of the state, it is obvious the hardest hit areas appear to to be southwest louisiana and cameron, geoff davis, allen, vermillion and acadia parish. , larges a very serious and powerful storm that produced significant amounts of damage. Before we get there, we already know there will be damage in southwest louisiana that will be difficult to differentiate between what was caused by hurricane laura and what was caused by hurricane delta, but what we know is that tens of are inds of louisianans a difficult situation and we will do every thing we can working with federal and local partners to make sure we are addressing their needs as soon as we possibly can. To that end, the National Guard has more than 3000 National Guardsmen activated in support of emergency operations. They are already moving commodities to set up points of distribution they are engaging in route clearance and engineering operations, security both in terms of fixed facilities like shelters, but in assisting law enforcement. They are also running generator missions. As of this morning, they have 1. 5 million meals they can distribute, one point 5 million bottles of water, about 32,000 tarps and early 2000 bags of ice. They are conducting searchandrescue sweeps in southwest louisiana as well. The National Guard has rescued about 10 individuals. About 80 individuals across the state have received assistance with rescue, evacuation or relocation due to urban search and rescue teams. Thearily those are marshalls office, but we had teams from other states as well, and some seems some teams from fema. All measures put in place in lowlying areas, and where the gaps in levee Protection Systems were, were successful. That is primarily in st. Mary parish, Terrebonne Parish and grand isle. They are working now to position dewatering because those areas did take on water and that water is not yet leaving. They are going to work on those areas. Were this morning, there 165 weatherrelated road closures. We encourage everyone first of all, dont go out, it is still too early and we are engaging in searchandrescue butte we have restoration and rescue. We have restoration crews and first responders. Dont go sightseeing. To our website for realtime updates on conditions. As of right now, we are not reporting any fatalities related to hurricane delta. As we know, just because the storm system has passed and exited the state, that doesnt mean the dangers are over. They are talking about temperatures in southwest louisiana in the upper 80s. We had some people die of heat related illnesses. We will get to Power Outages in a moment. Dramaticre killed by incidents, falling off their roofs or cutting up trees that fell on them. Gov. Bel edwards Everybody Needs to exercise a lot of caution, even now. Especially now. Wasuse hurricane delta larger in terms of its winfield, there were more Power Outages from delta than laura. 000 outages as88, of noon and that decreased to 600,000. So restoration appears to be progressing rapidly more rapidly than after laura because the damage to infrastructure is not as significant. That is still a lot of Power Outages. Current levels, 25 of customers in louisiana are without power as we speak. So we still have a lot of work to do with respect to restoring power. The good news is, we have 10,000 utility workers in state now, working on this. Generator,using a please be safe, careful. Follow the directions and make sure it is 20 feet away from your home in a well ventilated area. And not close to a window or event, not in a crawlspace. Certainly not in your home or garage. 9441 this morning, louisianas were in shelters. 935 were evacuated because of hurricane delta. Shelters, air shelters and stakeholders. 8,394 hurricane laura evacuees sheltered in 2,027 and that includes in texas. After hurricane laura, we continue to receive people who needed shelter after the storm. Now after not happen hurricane delta, it we have depends how fast restoration of electricity occurs but we expect it will be additional individuals who need sheltering over the next three nights. We are an active discussion with federal partners to secure assistance we can for the state of louisiana, including nutrition assistance and so we are looking for waivers and Food Assistance for people across the state of louisiana and in those parishes most impacted by the two hurricanes and we will have more information on this soon. But for more information about disaster snap, and it has not been authorized or turned on for this disaster, but you can text, 898211, to get more information. If you are in one of the impacted areas and want to preregister, so you can get that out of the way in the event that d snap is turned on, you can do that. However, registration is not an application and if and when the snap is activated you will still need to apply. Text to lad snap lad snap to 898211. We are blessed with good weather over the next several days. It should be dry and coolingoff as we move forward. We have a couple of days where the temperatures will get into the upper 90s but this should allow us to get a good start on the recovery from hurricane delta. As you know we were recovering from hurricane laura. So the weather should be helpful. I do ask people to continue to be Good Neighbors to one another and i know that is happening now with more volunteers than can be counted. Churches and other religious organizations are out there. People are being Good Neighbors to one another. We can continue to do that but i do want to remind people we arent a covid environment so please make sure you do it with all of that mitigation measures in place including masking or other face coverings. Make sure your socially distanced the maximum extent possible and that you do not engage in these recovery operations in terms of volunteering if you are sick. Lets make sure we are protecting the most vulnerable. With that we will take a few questions before we leave here and had to southwest lose southwest louisiana. [indiscernible] was that flooding that will be problematic . Gov. Bel edwards i cannot tell you which was the most significant but we know there was more flooding land with delta than with laura. We have had flooding in allen parish, and repeats parish and points further north than that. We note the wind damage was significant as well but it is hard to just take a quick look and no wind damage was caused by which storm so we are going to have more information as we move forward and this is really important, because the way we work with the federal government with respect to documenting storm response and damages, then for the reimbursement, it depends on which of those storm, which storm because what damage. We are trying to work with fema to get them to consider to the maximum extent possible, consolidating these two disasters, because they occurred in close proximity, temporal proximity in time at geographic proximity and it is going to be very difficult to differentiate. So, hopefully, they will allow us to do that and get to that enhanced reimbursement of at least . 90 on the dollar federal. Then of course we had a request b and debristegory removal at one had a percent. We are still waiting on that response from the federal government. Yesmen . Yes . [indiscernible] debris and [indiscernible] it does not sound like how that happens [indiscernible] gov. Bel edwards i have not had those personal conversations with individuals on the ground i would need to have a better idea. I will tell you, i did call and spotcheck. It appears the vast majority of debris was going to be vegetative. That did not really get picked up and blown around. Where you had construction and demolition debris, maybe a sheet of 10 that would catch the wind and blow around. But it does not appear to have been the problem we thought it might be. Mentioning and this goes to how every storm is unique and just because you think you know what to expect from previous drums does not mean you shall that guard down s previous storms, not mean you should let your guard down, in many ways it appears the storm was stronger on the west side than the east side, which is strange and not something a Weather Service expected or talked to us about. In terms of windspeed and in some places where the rain fell, a stronger storm on the west side even though as it came ashore at six clock p. M. Yesterday the i was collapsing was collapsing already and you had dry air fitting from the south and we know it went over cooler water just before it made landfall. The strongest part of the storm appear to be on the west side and that is where you saw much of the debris blown around over in that portion of lake charles and west of lake charles. Yes . [indiscernible] gov. Bel edwards we did. In fact the vast majority of people who sheltered last night because of hurricane delta sheltered in bastrop. And that was well over 800. Other . Any timeline on power restoration. Gov. Bel edwards there are still doing the initial damage assessments. To makelly do not want i guess now or an estimate of restoration. To the appear the damage infrastructure, especially the transmission lines, those large towers, much, much less significant this time than the first time and if that is true we will see restoration happen more quickly. We think that will be the case in north louisiana. And as you move toward southwest louisiana it is going to take longer. This appears to beer appears to be not transmission related but distribution related where we will have to replace utility poles. So it should be faster and i hope so. Right now we have numerous water systems, hospitals and nursing homes, operating on generator power. As you know generators over time , they have a tendency to fail. So we have to make sure we have redundant generators available. Im going to pause because we hear the helicopters coming in and it will be time for us to get on those in a moment. We will let you know when the lid update is going to be and we will have a ucg meeting tomorrow afternoon here. Whether there is going to be oppressive l ability after that we will let you know shortly. Thank you very much and i s toinue to ask louisianan offer up prayers of thanksgiving and to hold up each other in prayer as we get to the recovery of hurricane delta. Thank you. The competition is on. Be a part of this year sisi down cspan studentcam competition. Make a 56 minute documentary exploring the issue you want the president and congress to address in 2021. Be bold with your documentary, show supporting and opposing points of view and include cspan video. Be a winner. Prizess 100,000 in cash include in the grand prize of 5,000. The deadline to summit videos is generate 20, 2021. Youll find competition rules, tips and information on how to get started at a website, studentcam. Org. According to the Cook Political Report there are 90 competitive house races this year, almost evenly split between democrats and republicans. The gop needs to take 21 seats to gain control of the next congress. Coming up, a debate between Gina Ortiz Jones and Tony Gonzales to see he will replace will heard whourrently will hurd, represents the 23rd Congressional District in texas. The debate is hosted by southwest texas junior college, Sul Ross State University and ksattv. Rep. Will hurd rtexas who announced that he will not run for reelection. Togood evening at welcome southwest texas junior college, and Sul Ross State University satellite location here and you bow they. I want to explain this is a year like no other and an election like no other. And this is a debate like no other. We are here in a mostly empty auditorium. The pandemic has required that. You might notice centerstage as an eight by 12 foot plexi glass wall. Part of what we are going to do is politics through the plexiglas. We have our photographers in this auditorium. We are following strict protocols. The three of us are on