you think there s enough funding? are you confident there s enough if there s another extreme weather event in the next month? yesterday as i announced i directed my personnel to implement immediate needs funding and that prioritizes the remaining funding within the disaster relief fund to support those life saving efforts. i believe through this effort we have plenty of funding to be able to support our ongoing efforts in maui to include this event, to include florida, georgia, and south carolina as needed. every day we are looking at what the cost of these storms are as we approach the end of this fiscal year, and if we have another storm, we re going to have to closely monitor what impact that s going to have and any other actions we might have to take. thank you for being here. as we do approach the end of the fiscal year as you noted, these takes weeks, months to recover. fema s involvement will go on for quite a long time. in 2013 when there was a government shutdown, fema ha
especially older adults and people living with disabilities to see if they have any needs. in closing, i just want to remind people that this is still very much an active situation. remnants of the storm are still affecting florida. as we speak the storm is over georgia and moving into south carolina. people there and in the carolinas will continue to experience impacts throughout the day today and possibly into the weekend. again, fema is well postured with our federal partners to support floridians during this time of need and stands ready to support other affected states as needed. with that, i can take any questions. thank you. administrator, what are you most concerned about over the next day or two since you just said it s too early right now to assess the extent of damage in florida? yeah, my biggest concern is those people who chose not to evacuate and i know that our local first responders, the heroes that are out there in those local communities are doing amazing job alre
were prepared and we were ready to support the needs of this storm. as i mentioned, we have actually over 1,500 federal responders that are on the ground in the affected area. this includes over 300 personnel from fema as well as over 500 urban search and rescue personnel ready to support any of the state s requests. as of 7:30 this morning and i know these numbers are dynamic and fluid. as of 7:30 this morning, there are nearly 3,000 customer outages for power in florida, and we do expect those numbers to continue to rise as the storm passes through and goes into georgia and we ll see power outage numbers for georgia, south carolina, and perhaps north carolina. our partners at the u.s. army corps of engineers are prepositioned to support power restoration and they have over 30 generators that are prestaged. additionally the utilities are preparing for storm impacts including prestaging crews and equipment outside of the projected storm track, and the state anticipates a total of
furlough its nonessential staff right now. what potential impact would a government shutdown, as lawmakers have considerations about whether to fund the government, have on fema s ability to care for those in both maui and in fell? florida. we always want to take account to what our personnel are doing and how we re using our personnel to support these events. our government shut down, they re able to continue operating and supporting the immediate efforts and life saving efforts that continue to go on, and we also for our other staff, can designate our emergency essential personnel to support any life saving efforts, and so we have plans in place as we have gone through this before on how we would staff our agency to continue to support those efforts. and if i can follow up about the critical needs assistance that was provided to those in maui, $700 in payments to individuals. given the cost of living, is anything being done, are
we want to go live to the white house, at the briefing is deanne criswell, the fema administrator. we have over a thousand personnel currently deployed, prepared to support not just florida but all of our states that are in the path as needed. while i was in there, the governor also or the president also directed me to travel immediately into the area, and i will be traveling later this afternoon to join governor desantis tomorrow to do assessments and see firsthand what the impacts from this storm are and i can report back to the president what i see, what we think the needs might be and where the federal family might continue to assist. i want to address the second reason that i am here at the white house today. today i will also join president biden alongside his cabinet and agency officials who are supporting the response and the recovery efforts on the ground in hawaii. as we continue to help the people of maui rebuild and recover over the long-term.