Students from low income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. Comcast supports cspan as a Public Service along with these othertelevision providers giving you a front row c to democracy. Florida Governor Ron Desantis talks about Recovery Efforts after ian caused damage to his state. Good morning. Im here of course with kevin guthrie, Florida Division of Emergency Management director, jim eifert and am pleased to be joining our fema administrator deeann criswell. We appreciate femas responsiveness so thank you very much and thank you for being here. You had people immediately descend onto the scene particularly in southwest florida. Making sure people are okay, following up with calls and theres been really a herculean effort. Theres also the assessment of whats been damaged thats going to impact the entire community and of course power is a big issue. There are people that are working i think lee and charlotte, you talk about 15 percent restored. Theres going to be some that will require rebuild so the utilities down there were down there first thing. Theyre prepared to do it. The other issue is lee county. They had a water main break for their county waterutility. That means the county does not have water at this point and you need to be able to function in society. Theyve requested support from fema and then we fema was able to provide the army corps of engineers and they were on the ground after kevin called them i think at three in the morning. They were on the ground from jacksonville to southwest florida in theafternoon. Theyve been working to assess that information. Wehave Florida National guard personnel standing by to help the army corps if they needed. But at the end of the day that is something that will be very very critical to be able to get that back and it may require more of a rebuild. Maybe it will require some more shortterm remediation. Theyre going through that but thats clearly a top priority and were thankful fema and the army corps are therehelping out. We have obviously there are a lot of folks in affected areas that evacuated. Some did shelter in place. As of last night weve contacted over 20,000 floridians that filled out a shelter in place survey on floridadisaster. Org. And over 10,000 have responded and all 10,000 said they were safe and they sent a first alert last night and are expecting more responses this morning. Cell phone connectivity, sometimes its easier to get out the text message so the process has been streamlined. Theres not a standalone site to report your locations so if youre having issues contacting your family via phone and if youre sheltering and want them to know your safe theres a website. Missing. Fl. Gov. These forms are triaged by staff in tallahassee and dispatched toresponders on the ground. In addition to the rescues yesterday rescues went out to 3000 homes in the hardest hit areas going door to door to check on the occupants of those residences. There are over 1000 dedicated rescue personnel going up and down the coast line. They also are going to be doing more and more inland in some of our inland portions of charlotte and leave but also desoto and hardy county. I think theyre 99 percent without. So you see really the troubling images of washed out homes on the Fort Myers Beach and that really was ground zero, obviously very important. But this is such a severe storm there are affects far inland and our rescue personnel are helping. Weve opened two major points of distribution for food and water this morning. First, charlotte sports park, spring Training Facility for the Tampa Bay Rays and the lee county sports complex, spring trainingfacility for the minnesota twins. These are pots much bigger than normal pots. 1. 6 million gallons of fuel into southwest florida that have been moved in to support the response. What were finding is the fuel supply is flowing. Its just a matter of the gas stations need to have power to be able to operate and if they have a certain number of pumps theyre required to have a generator. Some of the larger gas stations were operating so thats a good sign. As of 6 am there are 1. 9 Million People without power. Right now the hardest hit areas are hardy, 99 percent without power. Charlotte and lee have 80 percent without. And de soto is at 80 percent without. Sarasota, collier and manatee, close to half of the customers there are without power. Hillsborough and pinellas, 15 to 18 percent are without power and these crews have been on the ground since it was safe to do so and theyre working 24 seven to restore power throughoutthe state of florida and thats over 42,000 lineman and associated personnel that are on the ground. Fdot has had 1300 people on the ground, then cleared 1100 miles of roadway. I was happy to see the trafficflowing in southwest florida. Theres structural problems on the bridges leading to sanibel and pine island but largely they were clearing operations. Traffic is flowing in southwest floridaprobably better than would have been anticipated so soon after such major hurricanes. Theyve also inspected and reopened 100 bridges across the state and this includes 67 high priority bridges affected and reopened in lee, charlotte, sarasota and manatee counties. Pine island, sanibel, those will be rebuild efforts. The sanibel bridge has breaks in multiple parts. Most held up well. It was where you had it on some of the sandbars and those basically got washed out from underneath. In the meantime kevin can talk about this. Theyre going to be running barges to bring more heavy equipment on to the islands to help with the response so First Responders that have been there by and large coming into error, you have some equipment but their traveling light or just to be able to go and get people as quickly as possible. There have been six Healthcare Facilities evacuated in southwest florida. They were having problems with water or albums with power for an extended period of time. Were prioritizing getting power and running Potable Water to the rest of the areas Healthcare Facilities. There have been 117 facilities that lost power that now have power restored. Sports, tampa bay, everglades are reopened for fueling and i think between today and tomorrow all the reports in the state of florida up and down the coast will be operational. Food and water, massive amounts and kevin is sensitive to the water situation in lee. Theres an extraordinary amount of water thats been staged and is being brought into the area. Fema has activated their individual assistance program. If youre in need of help of recovering and those affected counties you can go to disaster assistance. Gov or call one 861 3262. 30,000 people have registered with fema. Make sure if youre looking at claims on your property you document that. Take photos, make sure you have it. We want to make sure you are able to be made whole as quickly aspossible. There will be in conjunction with fema, state of florida and local communities and our Disaster Recovery centers those will be set up soon and that will be a place if you need help with things like individual assistance you can go although you dont need to go there, you can do all this online. Theres also going to be insurance villages set up under the leadership of cfo jimmy patronis. Youre going to have Flood Insurance claims, and its our view that these claims need to be paid very quickly so that people can get back on their feet. I want to thank the first lady for spearheading our efforts for volunteer florida and activate the Disaster Fund where people can donate. If you want to contribute you will be joining a lot of people who sent a lot of money and we now have 12 million with 20 4 to 36 hours after the storm hits, pretty incredible that thats happened. If you want to go to florida Disaster Fund. Org. More than 10 million have come in and theres interest to do a lot more. Why is that important . Fema has certain things they can do. Via statute regulation. If this falls outside of that they just cant do it. Thats not the way it works. When you enlist private organizations they can be a little more nimble. They can tailor their response to make some of the unique needs citizens may have and obviously there are people that have been dislocated. You have people that no longer have homes so theres going to be a wide variety of things that theyre going to need in the coming days, weeks and months. Volunteer florida, if you want to volunteer your time visit volunteer florida. Org. I think this is one way where you can make an impact and i know people really appreciate allthe outpouring of support. I want to meet with an southwest florida. This is been a major event of course. And these people have been working around the clock to be able to serve their constituents and serve their communities and we appreciate the dedication. We appreciate the perseverance. We know theres a lot of difficult days ahead but theyve reallydone a great job. Im going to let kevin give a brief on the state response and then we will have the fema administrator, and provide some perspective from fema. Obviously thanking the governor but i want to thank the agencies represented here to my left especially fema administrator deeann criswell and admirable mcpherson from the United States coast guard, others that are not here that are buying me. Lieutenant colonel out of jacksonville, colonel booth out of jacksonville and many other adderall partners. Captain, if you can put them right back up here for just a second id appreciate it. I wanted to thank them before i covered them up with a sign here. So lets talk about, where right in that 72 hour area of search, secure, stabilize and i talked about it yesterday. The only thing i want to talk about is that search, secure and stabilize. We continue to have our fire rescue partners search and rescue going in there and committing what we call the hasty search and were coming back and doing the primary search and they will do a secondary search. Its important for everybody to know as part of the search and rescue element over a 72 hour period theres three searches that are conducted. That hasty search is just very quick. If they see any survivors alive or in traumatic situations and they start to move those individuals. Now were back to that primary search area which is now were doing a little more detailed search and doing a second searchbehind that. Stay safe. I want people to make sure they are safe. This comes down to personal preparedness and individual response. Generator safety. Weve been talking about it and talking about it but we still get reports of people operating their generators inside of the garage. Operating their generators out of the back window with a cord running through the window and were having continued issues with Carbon Monoxide. Im not saying were having Carbon Monoxide deaths, just saying were having Carbon Monoxide issues. Please operate your generators in safe mode. It includes not having electrical cords actually run through puddles of water. Lets make sure we got them elevated. Next, as i mentioned last night chainsaw safety. Ladder safety. Why are safety. If you dont know what it is dont cut it. If you dont know how to cut it, dont cut it. Let the professionals come in and do that. We have more than 2000 resource requests from our impacted local partners and more than 1700 are in the process of completion and theres an important bulletin to note here. Along the county put in mission request for food and water but we had a 45, 50 count he disaster. Now we have counties starting to cancel their food and water so when we say 2000 1700 we have those this gap but i want people to understand there were 2000 requests, were filling 1700. Some of those are going to be organically canceled because theyre not infected at the county level. Weve mobilized 14,000 gallons of diesel to provide water to nearby hospitals. We deployed to Hernando County fire and the sheriffs staff to use drones im sorry, for photography and video of flooded areas in desoto county. We need to make sure and ill take this time to say thank you to our restoration crews who have been able to take 500,000 individuals and get them power back. Were down to 1. 9 million and the power restoration area that need to be restored. Thank you to our First Responders. I want to bring in are starting to get questions about food and distribution points and im going to ask brian to give me this graphic weve made here. I think this is important for a couple of reasons. We talk about family personal. This plan. So what weve done here, we are in day number 23 of the response disaster. This is where your personal family plan is being executed. This is what weve asked. We partner with fema on this thread have 3 to 7 days of water. You hear me talk a lot about 5 to 7 in florida. Again, days one through five personal family plan. This is the food and water you have. We have food and water in shelters if you go to a shelter. The next phase youll see in orange. This moves us from the family plan over into the National Guard and local Community Level point of distribution plan. That will run for somewhere between the two hours at about 120 hours so 3 to 5 days. As we exit that again were way back over here. We will then come in with mass feeding kitchens. Those mass feeding kitchens will be designed to provide hot meals three times a day to the most impacted communities that still dont have food and water. Were getting questions, the first lady is getting questions and i want to make sure we have the opportunity to educate individuals how everything ties together. Personal plan, National GuardFood Distribution plan which is water and dry food at our points of distribution and then we will move into a hot feeding kitchen plan. Its important for everybody to understand how that connects and as we continue to get questions about that, where is your government today . We are in the process of moving National Guard, food has gotten to those locations. Now were moving down to the Community Plan which is that local National Guardelement. Im working with lee county today which is obviously the most impacted county. They have a Community Pods that will be opening a fully in some form or fashion later today and eight locations. Im going to let sandra take the lead on announcing those locations at the local level for staff so that when they are ready we are ready and i want to make sure we tie all that together. Last thing i want to talk about is and as individuals start to move debris to their curbside, you must separate it into piles. My Communications Team will be giving graphics at another update today at the 5 00 or this evening update. We will tell people how to separate their debris into piles so if youre doing it now, vegetation needs to be in its own pile. Structural, this is food or im sorry, structural is furniture. Tolling materials, plumbing issues. That needs to be ina separate pile. Then we call it household hazardous waste. These are your cleaning supplies, your batteries, your pesticides. Anything thats hazardous goes into its own pile. Electronics, tvs, computers, things of that nature into its own pile and the last pile is what we call light goods are appliances need to go into a separate pile so recapping thats agitation, structural, household hazardous waste, electronic appliances. As always, when moving stuff it is if it is too heavy get help. These are absolutely avoidable deaths and absolutely avoidable injuries. Get people to help you. We have many Faithbased Community groups. We have team rubicon. Individuals willing to help you get to that stuff to the roadside soplease be safe. Use gloves, use goggles. Make sure you look for powerlines that may be mixed up in all of this debris. Thanks for allowing me to do a little detail. We will be back this afternoon with more information and as always governor thank you for your leadership. The floor is yours. Governor, thank you for allowing me to join in and id like to recognize my regional administrator. She has been on the ground since before the storm hit working sidebyside with director guthrie but its not just that. Our Regional Office works with the state of florida and all the states in region four to make sure we are planning, coordinated and that we have an event like this we can seamlessly move in to assist and support the state with their needs. What we have done prior to landfall is we did stage a lot of search and rescue resources to support the great efforts happening here in the state of florida. We have those Resources Available if the state needs it and weve begun to move in food and water into distribution which you heard from director guthrie and the governor. What i want to say is we are here to support. Fema is here to support these efforts to continue the lifesaving missions that are still ongoing and also to begin to support the recovery mission. As you heard the governor say the president did declare a major disaster declaration for individual assistance as well as public assistance. Public assistance will allow us to reimburse a lot of the First Responders who do an amazing job, allow us to reimburse overtime crews for work they are doing to stabilize systems and on the individual assistance side there are 13 counties that have been dedicated but we will add more. As we continue to do assessments we will continue to add more counties so individuals can apply for assistance and i want to reiterate you can go to disaster assistance. Gov or call one 800 621 3262 or go to our fema at. I also want to let people know that we are going to have teams of individuals going into the shelters to them register for assistance. Right now we know many people are away from their home, they may not have access to the internet so were going to send teams to go into the shelters tobegin the Recovery Process for them. Dinner, i want to commit to you on behalf of thepresident we are here to support this recovery. We know were still in an active response stage. Weve already started planning for what the recovery is going to be the cause we know this will be a very complicated and complex recovery. We want to make sure we have the right resources. Thank you so i can see firsthand what some of the needs are. I brought recovery and response personnel with me to make sure we are bringing the right resources to support the governor and what his concerns are. Any questions . First of all do we have an update on casualties and what are you asking for and need from fema . The number one thing we need which was the army corps to support lee county and theirwater situation. Its critical and get that infrastructure back up and running. You look at this storm obviously there was significant damage but you also have a lot of folks had minimal or maybe no damage and getting them back and make sure theyre in their homes, they have therunning water. The electrical, all of that will make all the other efforts better. As Hurricane Ian approaches. Its probably the number one priority. Kevin would say thats the number one priority and the art core, theyre the subject Matter Experts so hopefully they get the diagnosis planned as the county will go in and fix it. Where we operate this, ill break it down by county. We have one confirmed fatality and pulled county. 12 unconfirmed fatalities in charlotte county. We have eight unconfirmed fatalities in Collier County and we are processing through the situation with that hasty search in lee county. Let me talk about confirmation and unconfirmed. People die