Richard Desjardins retired in 2020 after a 29-year career as a Canadian public servant. Born in Montreal, Canada, he obtained a BA (1983) and MA in political science (1991) and studied Chinese in Taiwan (1985-1988). He writes on topics dealing with China and Canada-China relations for various publications.
Graeme Maxton is a full member and past secretary general of the Club of Rome, a global network of renowned independent thinkers dedicated to addressing the challenges facing humanity. He is the co-author of Reinventing Prosperity: Managing Economic Growth to Reduce Unemployment, Inequality and Climate Change, and the sole author of The End of Progress: How Modern Economics Has Failed Us. Both books were international best-sellers. He was previously with The Economist Group in Hong Kong.
moving. and yet, what s interesting about this one is that because of the king tide, because of the high tides, because of all the water, it seems to have left a whole lot more water when you think that hurricane andrew was a cat 5 and this one wasn t as powerful and yet there s a lot of flooding. it s because of the low lying areas we are in. thank you for everything. thanks for staying and talking to us. it makes a difference to have you right down there. thank you so much. joining us now by phone is craig stephens. chief stephens, thank you. talk to me about the storm surge and what you are experiencing there. yes, ma am. right now in citrus county from us-19 we have us-19 shut
obviously, we have a lot of debris on the ground. nothing that isn t from a normal storm. i would say that what i saw was tropical force. i didn t see anything on the coast. i m sure the coast was a lot worse than what i saw. indeed. citrus county fire chief, craig stephens, you have to get back to work. thank you for taking time to talk to us. yes, ma am. you have a good day. good luck to all of your people. joining us now is florida s state fire marshall and chief financial officer. we have to we can t keep meeting like this in the middle of hurricanes year after year. that s exactly what i was thinking. the governor said this morning that he hoped they would get through this year without one. here we are. what are you learning about the damage? the areas of concern were taylor county, levy county, surge up to 12 feet in some areas.
32,000 linesmen on standby with the trucks. we saw a lot of the trucks. they were just outside here i think it was yesterday. they are all over. 5,500 florida guardsmen that have been activated. the coast guard has been put on standby in the state of florida. all of these efforts and all of this manpower certainly makes a difference. the other thing, quickly, jose, it seems to me just watching that there isn t a lot of wind right now. this is so fast moving that it moved past. at least it hasn t been sitting on top of you guys. yeah. i can think of i was going back to i was talking to craig, the former fema administrator and mr. florida on so many issues, just thinking back on hurricane andrew in 1992, august, covering that storm. it was almost equally as fast