going to help. let s talk it over with cnn contributor dave halstead. he s a former director of the florida division of emergency management. dave, nice to have you on. how did the president do today? well, i think he said the right things. the most important thing he did though was sign that major disaster declaration which releases funds into the state. there s two primary categories, one is state assistance and public assistance. it will bring it into the states and counties and get everything back up and running. right now we re in the life sustaining mode. you saw him at places where citizens are being fed. water is being delivered. fema has millions and millions of meals en route to florida, en route to the impacted areas. millions of gallons of drinking water. life sustaining is the issue now. it s important that he shows his face, that of the vice president to show how concerned they are
and to try to reassure the citizens. he talked about getting people up and running. something like 2.5 million people still don t have power and the president addressed that today. power is literally, rick, it s going on as we speak. it s going way ahead of schedule, weeks ahead of schedule. i mean, you know, dave, i mean, let s just get a reality check when we hear ahead of schedule. you know, obviously he wants to be optimistic and he knows way more about any of this than you and i do at the moment, but how long does this kind of thing really take to turn back on? well, again, there are going to be homes without power for many more weeks past the deadlines that have been set. the issue is we keep focusing on florida power and light. granted, they are the large dog in the hunt. there are dozens and dozens of private utilities and they need to be on the same page as the president to make sure they re pushing to get that power restored. listen, the power companies are
journalism business do you want to be wrong the way you want to be wrong in a situation like this. i hope the models are wrong. i hope it blows farther west. it s going to be someone s problem wherever it goes. but if it s accurate, you can only prepare for so much. so for all the pressers and all the detail, once it hits, there are going to be problems that are unforeseen and can t be managed. the way i looked at it when i ran emergency management, you ve got a power curve. you ll be hee hind the power curve when the storm hits. the question is how long does it take you to catch up? how long does it take you to get ahead of that power curve? are you always trying to catch up or can you get ahead? here in florida, i know our history has been we can get ahead pretty quickly. andrews was our lesson. it spanked us and taught us we weren t prepared, weren t ready. since then we ve done everything we can in the local level and state level to be prepared. you see now brock long, a former a
that was the secretary of health and human service, tom price. one aspect of this is how do you deal with the sick and the needity who are power-dependent in a storm that may knock out power. that shows the granular level. let s bring in dave halstead, former director of state emergency management here in florida. do you like what you re hearing in terms of coordination and management top down? i do, but i like it the other way. you talked to the congresswoman. it starts at the local level. you hear the message, you hear the message consistently, you hear it across party lines. then you go to the state level, governor scott leaning way forward. next it will be up to brock long and the fema team to back up anything we can t provide here in the state of florida. what i see is a term certainly right now looking like they re very unified. here is the problem or the challenge or the reality, however you want to put it. you can only prepare for so much. if this is what it is expected to
who knows the risks and the realities. cnn contributor dave halstead, the former director of state emergency management here in florida. dave, thank you very much. so, let s deal with points of resistance. did you see that traffic? i m not going to do that drive. i m better off staying home. that s the problem. we get so gridlocked in our thinking and gridlocked in our driving that it makes it impossible for people to see the reality that it s still better to get out of here. yes, they re stuck in traffic now. they re not going to be stuck there when the storm hits. it s going to be cleared. they re going to be taken to shelters or they re going to be able to clear the area. second thing we ve been hearing, not so much from the locals but the people who are vacationing down here. look at this. it s beautiful. it s beautiful. look at the people still on the beach. what is the reality about the violence of the shift? the reality is tomorrow you and i cannot stand here. we would not