Produce hurricanestrength winds and massive floodings not just where it makes the initial land fall, but throughout the state of florida so central and northeast florida will also feel impacts. Now while most people in the evacuations did leave, there were some that chose to stay. I was speaking with the sheriff down in Charlotte County and while most people did leave, they had a small number of people that just wanted to hunker down and at the end of the day, thats a decision they made knowing they had the ability to evacuate and knowing what the stakes were. Nevertheless, safety, life safety, operations will commence as soon as its safe to be able to identify people who maybe in harms way and in need of assistance and kevin will say ill say a little bit about that but kevin will say more and well hear from fwc about their efforts that they have staged and ready to go. If you are still in southwest florida, stay inside until the storm passes. It may appear to be calm at some point and you may be in the eye of the storm and the backside of that will get very, very nasty. The storm is expected to move across Central Florida and exit Daytona Beach sometime on thursday. Weve already seen around the state tornado warnings issued, far from where the hurricane is entering in southwest florida and those warnings will likely to continue until this finally leaves our state. Even if youre not in the direct path of the storm, you need to take all tornado warnings seriously and you need to take appropriate precautions if that is happening in your area. Florida department of it happens Just Announced that ft. Drum canoe creek and turkey lake plaza on florida turnpike are now closed and theyll try to debt them open as soon as possible. We have 200,000 Power Outages in southwest florida and 200,000 is a drop in the bucket for whats going to happen over the next 2448 hours. Theres going to be widespread Power Outages, particularly in southwest florida. We have over 100 portable cell towers ready to be deployed into the area once it is safe to enter. Once the storm has passed and it is safe to go outside, you still need to be cautious. Avoid downed power lines, standing water, stay clear of downed trees and dont drive in standing water, and please if youre going to use a generator for your home, do not allow that to be inside. The exhaust needs to be outdoors. Stay out of the way of emergency crews out of flood waters and away from all downed power lines. Stay off the roads. Theres no need to rush back. Youre going to have a mass i surge of people that are going to be going in to provide of course life safety assistance for those who may have stayed in some of the more hazardous areas, youre also going to have power workers going in. We were just in lake city. I was thanking we had all these power and line workers from all the different stakes from texas, louisiana, all these different places staged. We have a massive, massive mobilization. Their job is to get in there and help to restore services. Youre also going to have folks bringing in things like food and water. No need to rush back in and a lot going on in the immediate aftermath and a lot of People Safety depends on that. If youre putting yourself in danger and limiting ability of emergency crews to restore power and clean debris. We dont know how much debris therell be but theres going to be debris and thatll make it difficult to navigate some roads and fdots Immediate Mission is to clear the roadways so people can go in and access that to be able to help deliver services for people. In 2019, we were projected to be hit by hurricane dorian, which is a category 5 storm. Fortunately at the last minute it took a north ward turn and missed the coast but we had a massive mobilization. This mobilization exceeded that and its a really, really significant effort, county level, state level, federal support. Its really been impressive to see. Director guthrie asked for Additional Air lift hoist and high water vehicles from dod in coordination with fema. The secretary of defense has approved floridas request for dual status of our National Guard forces under title 10 to be to provide additional forces, which we very much appreciate. We will also be submitting momentarily the disaster declaration for all 67 counties and well request that the federal government reimburse 100 of the upside of 60 days to ensure we can quickly recover and move forward into the response and recovery part. If you think about this storm, have we had storms as strong as this hitting florida . Michael, hurricane andrew, labor day hurricane many, many decades ago. Yes. Have we had big storms that left a lot of water and flooding . We had irma recently. This is really bringing both to the table. Youre going to have massive amount of power hitting that coastline with really, really strong winds. That is going to do a lot of wind damage, but you also have the storm so massive and people are kind of comparing this to the track that charlie took in 2004 because charlie was like this expected to hit tampa bay, it turned and end up hitting southwest florida. Charlie was strong, but it was a fraction of the size of what were dealing with here with Hurricane Ian. So the effects of this are going to be broad, and we appreciate the biden administrations consideration for the people of florida during this time of need. When i was in lake city, you had massive numbers of linemen, but you have those staged all over the state. Theres now over 42,000 linemen and other personnel ready to restore power in 30 different areas across the state, and those linemen and other associated personnel hail from of course many from florida but from 27 different states. Of course our department of transportation does have 1200 personnel on standby to perform cut and toss operations understands how important it is to get the roadways clear as soon as possible. Supplieswill be brought in by plane, boat, and high water vehicle. Airports in southwest florida have teams behind and theyll work to clear the runways as soon as the storm has passed. We appreciate the florida National Guards really impressive mobilization of over 5,000 folks as well as 2,000 additional guardsmen from other states. They have nine helicopters ready to go and additional 22 helicopters will be coming in after landfall that will be here within the next 24 hours. Kevin will talk a little bit more about this, but we have the five search and urban search and rescue teams. Youll hear from fwc about what theyre doing. High water vehicles from florida highway and our Florida Partners and theres going to be a massive effort as soon as it passes southwest florida to be able to get out, recon the area, and identify areas where there may be a need of rescue service. Some of these counties obviously know where residents decided to hunker down in and theyll be looking there first. This is going to be really, really important to be able to get, i think in hurricane michael, i mean it took a few days to be able to get into mexico beach. We have the air assets to be able to recon and know where the response efforts need to go so in total, we have nearly 250 aircraft, more than 1600 highway water vehicles, and more than 300 boats of all drafts and sizes including 250 already in the major impacted areas and nearly 50 that are staged and ready to come in as needed. These include smaller rescue oriented boats, airboats and larger boats that will be delivering supplies by water if need be. I want to thank the 26 states that have sent us support including tennessee, virginia, montana, new york, colorado, indiana, new jersey, and georgia. I just spoke with kay ivey from alabama and shes supporting sending us black hawk helicopters down to help. Governer bill lee in tennessee fast tracked a request we had from tennessee and appreciate that and spoke with John Bell Edwards from louisiana and theyve helped us saying weve got a lot of experience in hurricanes recently. Theyre good, ask us. We want to send more. We appreciate that consideration and if we need that, well do that. We also understand that people that are going to be that are displaced will need assistance with the department of Economic Opportunity deployed funding and guidance through Community Action agencies to help florideans in need of shortterm support like utilities, hotel bills and transportation if theyve been displaced by this storm. Please continue to monitor local reports, whether reports. Be very cautious about going out into Hazardous Conditions and once the storm passes your area, just make sure that youre very careful because theres going to be a lot of things, a lot of hazards down on the ground. I know theres a lot of people that have reached out, first of all i want to say thanks. A lot of people offered thoughts and prayers for the folks in the eye of this storm and that means a lot to us. Theres also people that want to be able to do their part so ive directed volunteer florida to activate the Florida Disaster Fund where people can donate. Much better to donate financially than sending items. We have everything we need in terms of the Immediate Response needs, but there will be thousands of florideans who will need help rebuilding and to contribute to the disaster fund, visit www. Floridadisasterfund. Org or text disaster toto 20222. Disaster to 20222. If you want to come volunteer, theres a portal at volunteer florida at www. Volunteerflorida. Org, www. Volunteerflorida. Org and you can look to see the volunteer opportunities. This is going to be a rough patch here for the rest of today and into tomorrow. We understand how significant this storm is. Yes, therell be an Immediate Response. Yes, therell be things that happen with recovery. Eventually there wont be much Media Attention on this as the weeks and months go on, but we understand a storm of this magnitude is going to require an effort over an extended period of time. Those are good folks down in southwest florida and theyve got really, great thriving communities. This is not anything anyone wants to deal with. Its not something we certainly ask for, but were going to step up, were going to be there for folks and were going to make sure that folks get back on their feet and swot florida comes back better than every. Ever. Okay, kevin guthrie. Thank you, governor. Hurricane ian is approaching landfall as a category 4 storms with winds of 155 Miles Per Hour in lee and shirley counties. At this time, the division has received nearly 1,000 resource requests from impacted local partners and 864 of those are either in process or completed. Were working as quickly as we can to address the needs of those impacted areas. This morning i talked with each and every local emergency manager in the direct path of the storm. If youre sheltering in place in the path of the storm, were asking you now to please visit floridadisaster. Org info and fill out our shelter in place survey. Again, that is floridadisaster. Org info to fill out our shelter in place survey. The shelter in place survey is designed to provide critical information to First Responders about the demographics of your household to aid your family as soon as possible. This is primarily for those who did not evacwait so we know evacuate so we know where you are at. This is not a substitute for 911. If you have immediate need for first reigns leading responder assistance, dial 911. Those 911 services may not be able to come to you right now but again, if you need emergency services, dial 911. Even if it is calm outside, you may be in the eye of the storm. I encourage our individuals near santa bell, that ft. Meyers area as the eye wall starts to come on shore, if everything stops, the storm is not over. If you can hear us, if you can see us on your tv, youre most likely have bright sunshiny area here very soon. Youre in the eye of the storm. Stay inside. Stay indoors, do not go outside. You do not know when that eye wall will collapse. So please stay safe. Avoid downed power lines and downed trees in standing water when it is over. Use extreme caution. If you see any type of line, do not cut them. Do not cut fiberoptic lines. Fiberoptics are the backbone of our Communication System that allows us to have connectivity for your cellular devices on wireless wet i dont recollects and provides devices and provides access to the internet and social media. Please, do not cut fiberoptic lines. To the communities beginning to experience the devastating impacts of Hurricane Ian, know that the state of florida is standing with you. We have plenty of resources to respond to your need. We have thousands of boats on the ground. We have thousands of boots on the ground. Were ready to assist you. We will make sure that all available resources are used to help you through this difficult time. Please do everything you can right now to stay safe. Thank you, governor, very much for the opportunity to be here and be your director. Thank you. All right. Colonel roger young, director of division of law enforcement, florida fish and Wildlife Conservation commission. Thank you, governor, appreciate it. Thank you, governor and director, for your leadership as always but especially during the trying times. On behalf of fwc, im colonel roger young and we send prayers and support to all those in the path of the storm at this time. But also know that the f wc offices across the state are prepared, trained, and ready for a full response to the storm. We have 100 officers outside of the affected area ready to respond to high water vehicles and special equipment and vessels. We have 250 vessels staged already inside the affected area that will be ready and utilized for response to the storm. So just know that we appreciate all the support that were getting, but officers will be ready to respond in this time. Just want to say thanks to everyone and fwc officers will be ready for response. Thank you. Okay, agency for Healthcare Administration, we have secretary simon marstiller. Governor, thank you very much for your leadership. Director guthrie, you as well. Good afternoon. As the eye of Hurricane Ian makes landfall, all Healthcare Facilities have made the necessary preparations and stand ready for ians impact. Since the beginning of the emergency, our agency has been focused on the safety and wellbeing of residents and patients and hospitals and longterm facilities. Weve activated the Health Facility reporting system, and weve requested and still do request that all Healthcare Facilities continue to report their census, their available beds, their evacuation status and their generator status information. And that includes even facilities that might be outside of the impacted area areas. We need to be sure that we can provide the necessary resources to assist everyone when the time comes for response and recovery. As of today, ocas teams have coordinated with our licensed Healthcare Facilities in evacuated more than 7,000 patients and residents from 150 facilities. Additionally, our team has activated the emergency patient locate system or e plus. This allows special need shelters in impacted areas to retrieve patient records and medical providers and Emergency Response personnel to locate missing or displaced persons after the storm. We also have nearly 400 ambulances, para transit buses, and support vehicles standing by to respond to the areas of impact. In addition to ocas teams regular visits to all of our licensed Healthcare Facilities, we have completed more than 343 additional on site visits to our Nursing Homes and assisted living facilities within the cone of expectens and i know youve heard the governor say this over the last few days but 100 of our omitterring Long Term Care facilities have generators on site. We have also worked very closely with our partners at the Florida Hospital association, Florida Healthcare Association and leading age, florida senior living, and the florida assisted living associations. Weve activated working with them, the Patient Movement mission. We know that facilities are currently bracing for impact as Hurricane Ian is anticipated to make landfall here shortly. Following the storm, the agency for Healthcare Administration stands ready to immediately deploy our surveyors for on site visits to the impacted facilities. During these visits, we will ensure that each facility is maintaining an appropriate temperature for residents and that all other conditions in those facilities are safe for residents. If you are a patient or resident or Family Member of someone in one of our Long Term Care facilities or other healthcare facility and have experienced any issues during the storm related to that facility or your stay there or the service, please know that you can lodge a complaint with the agency for Healthcare Administration on our website and thats aaca. Myflorida. Com using our online complaint portal. If you are a licensed Healthcare Provider and experience any issues during the storm, please of course notify your local emergency manager but also please report through our Health Facility reporting system immediately so we know exactly what your status is and what we need to do to provide you the resources and help that you need. Moving forward, the agency continues to require these kinds of status reports for Power Outages, beds availabilities, and other needs. This has truly been a collaborative effort and i and my team appreciate all of the work that our Agency Partners have been putting in. Thank you, governor. As we see Power Outages accumulate over the next day, two days, the crews that are assembled massive numbers of people, one of the first orders of business, restore power, fuel, all the essentials, not every power outage is going to be created equal across the state over the next two days when you have a storm coming in at 155 miles an hour, thats not just going to knock down a few power lines. Yeah, its going to do that, but it also has the potential to really uproot a lot of the infrastructure that makes people connected and that is used to deliver power to people. That will just require a reconstruction of that and thats something that can be done, but its not as easy as just simply hooking up a downed power lineback into place. So as you get more severe wind impacts, more powerful storm, the storm surge, you know, thats where youre in jeopardy of seeing a lot of that inis it a structure disrupted in a infrastuckture in a way than just rehooking it and may have homes or businesses that will not be able to take the power because of changes to whats happened to their structures. So just keep that in mind. The folks that are staged are mindful of those different things. They want to get in as soon as possible, assess the damage, and help do the restoration efforts. Some of that may just be typical repair but some may be more in line of reconstruction so just be prepared for that and therell be significant Power Outages. With a storm of this magnitude, thats the reality. Its going to pass today from southwest florida. As soon as its safe to go in, theres going to be people. Ive talked to a lot of locals. They know where they need to look to see the damage assessments to see where people may be in harms way. Obviously folks at state level will be doing the same thing, and its important. We want to make sure obviously save people that may need to be rescued but then get these services started again because we need to get people back on their feet as soon as possible. Okay. With that, ill take some questions. Governor, you mentioned there were some people that chose not to stay staying in evacuation areas, do you have any sense that chose to stay, you mean . Gotchas that that chose to stay that are in evacuation. Are you doing a survey thats voluntary in terms of who wants to participate in that. I spoke to the Charlotte County sheriff whos ground zero for this and its their view that the vast, vast majority of people in the zone a did evacuate. They have an Island Community where 31 people that were told, were offered the transit, and they just said that they wanted to stay and shelter in place. So i know a lot of those Barrier Island communities, the counties discontinued services and they were incentivized to get in a more comfortable environment, but some of these people made that decision to stay and local officials are not going to grab them by the shirt collar and drag them out of their own house. They did that and, look, weve been saying that if youre in an evacuation zone, once that order is made, youre risking potentially your life by staying and people did that. Nevertheless as much as you may disagree with that decision, if theres people in harms way when this storm passes that need help, were going to be out there helping folks. Thats just the way were going to do it. I know that the folks down there in charlotte and surrounding counties feel the same way, and theres a lot of resources that have been brought in to do just that. Yep, go ahead. At this point, governor, have you heard anything about i know its early so probably too soon to tell, fatalities, any serious injuries, anything like that associated with the storm . Kevin, i have not got a report on that yet. [inaudible]. Of those 150 facilities, how many of them were hospitals and do you have a sense of how many patients within those hospitals that would encompass . The most recent information that i have 15 hospitals evacuated and that amounts to roughly 350 patients. You know, its interesting, of course you guys have been following the track, you know, i mean, it was going to be north florida then tampa and people talking about one of the worst Case Scenarios but its gone down. My view on that, wherever it hits, if youre in that community, its worse Case Scenario for you. When it was in tampa, i spoke with the sea of tampa general and they have a fortification system of their hospital that can with stand 1015 feet of storm surge and do that to keep the patients there and dont have that and in a lowlying area you have to evacuate. A number of Hospital Systems have done that in the lowlying areas. I think particularly in the tampa area, i know we had a lot of special needs evacuations as we should. I mean, youve got to take the information that you have and theyll feel the effects but my hope is those patients will be brought back as soon as the storm is passed and i dont anticipate major structural damage is my hope in the area. You dont have a take on evacuations for cape coral given the storm surge diagrams and looked like theres a lot of storm surges in that area. And just wondering how evacuation records were there as they embrace the eye . Again, all of those individuals are under evacuation orders. We dont have the numbers of what the percent was that evacuated versus didnt. I would imagine since most of that same area went through charlie, they probably evacuated. Again, charlie was a fraction of the size of this particular storm, but i would imagine that most people that lived through that, they went ahead and evacuated. I think another issue is just there were people that evacuated tampa bay to ft. Meyers because you see the different weather tracks and it was thought that it would go hit tampa, maybe go up the coast and that was not that long ago. I mean that was, what, 36, 48 hours ago. You go back another 12, 24 hours from that and it was going to hit Taylor County so i think some of the folks in southwest florida because so much focus was on tampa then now its maybe coming here. I think some heeded the warnings but i think its because the forecast can kind of be all over the map that some say you said it was there and now its there. I think in the future, the we try to stress the uncertainty but when you have a model taking it to louisiana and another model takes it to sarasota and you just kind of meet i mean, its not probably the ideal situation. Now that were close, once youre within 72, certainly 48, those are very accurate forecasts but before that, i mean, theres so much uncertainty, but i think sometimes people think, well, you said it was going to be here and now youre saying here. Well see how it goes. I know the folks in lee county once that forecast changed, i know they acted very quickly. As they should have. I know that they provided people with ample opportunity to be able to evacuate. I do think some heeded it, some did not and chose to hunker down and hopefully the people that made that choice that it worked out favorably for them. How many specifically for the tampa bay area coming to rescue efforts from the state . In the tampa bay area for rescue . Well, i mean obviously we have enough assets and we understand this is a big, big impact that the rescue efforts are not going to be limited to one municipality or one county. Youll potentially have more. My hope is that youre not going to need massive rescue efforts the further away you are from the storm. I also have a huge amount of confidence in the folks in the tampa bay area. You look at sheriffs departments, these are very first rate operations. They have excellent ability to respond to that. Kevin will be here, our folks will be here if needed, but our sense is that the further away from the storm, probably the local responders are going to be able to handle that. Here in southwest florida, youre going to have all those local responders out but then youre also going to have all this support, coast guard, fwc, youre going to have National Guard. I mean, this is a really, really concerted effort, and thats just the reality when you have such a significant impacted spot so hopefully they dont need us to fleet resources out. Well do it if theres something really significant. But you look at the guides they have up there, hillsborough hills wow. Nellisd pinellas. How many Nursing Homes were involved and theres an issue with transferring during an evacuation. How many what are you doing to kind of anticipate that trauma for those individuals . Well, to answer your how many question first. Nursing homes that have been evacuated at least again most recent information they have 40alf91 and the number of nursing home residents, 3508. Number of alf residents is 3,012. Thats the most recent information i have as of probably 10 00 or so this morning. Remember the facilities are selfreporting into our Health Facility reporting system. Now, to answer your other question, you know, the agency for Healthcare Administration has many partners involved in the effort to move patients when they need to be moved. Not many have the role to play but all the associations i mentioned earlier; right, the home games association, healthcare association, leading age all of those individuals are directly, you know, they directly work with their member facilities. So Nursing Homes and alf. It would be placed in the right location of them and keeping in mind their health needs, our Health Facility reporting system is also used to find where there are vacancies in other facilities. Many of the Nursing Homes, and Nursing Homes in particular have sister facilities else why elsen the state and makes that transfer easier and less stressful on the individuals who have to change their environment. Well have another update in a few hours and i will just say seems like over the last 1224 hours, every time you look at this storm, its been bad news. It gets stronger, it gets larger, and we really appreciate peoples concern for florida. We appreciate the players. Im going to prayers. Im going to be saying prayers that the folks there are able to get through this as best as humanly possible. This is a really, really significant storm. It will be one of the storms people always remember when they think about southwest florida probably being the big one that they always remember and if you know anything about our state, you go to panama city, that michael is just part of the dna of the community. Homestead, hurricane andrew is part of the dna of the community. This ian is going to rank up there with that so we need the thoughts and prayers over the near term and then theres going to be a huge effort on the back end to help people and to get the communities back on their feet. Thank you. Oo