reported in the tallahassee leon county area. we re aware of two deaths in neighboring counties, and our hearts go out to them and their families. here, in tallahassee, different than the coast. the threat was different. ours was always going to be wind and rain. saturated ground that would obviously topple trees with the kind of wind gusts and sustained winds we had yesterday during the storm. today, we have about 110,000 utility customers that are out of power. we have seen thousands of trees that have come down on houses and on cars. obviously on streets. we re quoting north of 200 streets that are impassable. the good news is, however, that our crews are already out working this morning. they started at 6:00 a.m. clearing debris, cutting and tosses trees off the road. moving through neighborhoods and obviously working to build or rebuild our utility system which was 90% impacted by this storm.
a different mission and got word that this thing was looking like it was going to make its way our way, and immediately got back here. between that evening and today we really had to ready ourselves rather quickly. on the good side, i will tell you in my community i mean we felt really prepared for this storm event. we were able to very quickly get over 100, 150 utility workers from across the state of florida and really across the country, as far away as nebraska, here on the ground, ready. these are the same crews that we re going to deploy in the morning to deal with some of the reconnecting that will be necessary to get our utility system back up and going. now, whether or not that was true all across the panhandle, i really can t say. i think that story is still yet to be told once we get an assessment of the range of damage that has occurred across the northern panhandle of florida. when will the first responders, mayor, be able to reach people in need? i tell you, in our a
released along the storm ravaged territories? you are getting a huge amount of evacuees. you know, it s hard for me to evaluate the federal aid that has gone into the island of puerto rico. since we own a utility, i do know a little bit about the utility infrastructure. and at the beginning of this segment, you talked about i guess still 90% of the population is without power. and it s a total rebuild of the utility system. we had a hurricane hardened system that we just had to take trees off of power lines. they had their power poles and all of the utility equipment completely blow down. so they re having to rebuild an entire system. and that s going to take some time. so that means people are without employment, without jobs, no power to their mohomes. so i would assume that there are going to be more than estimated people that leave as they continue to be without the basic
of course, downed poles. our utility system is down. we ve had some damage at the airport, and that island was used as the hub to do transportation and relief to the island of st. thomas and st. john. st. thomas is flooding. most of the downtown area is flooded out. this is going to be a lot of work. and by the way, so st. croix was a staging area for some of the stuff going on in the u.s. virgin islands and san juan, puerto rico also a staging area for water going out to the rest of the caribbean. we have problems that the places that were places you went for safety or supplying coming from are now damaged as well. sure. i mean, when people found out about maria on the island of st. croix, going to the grocery stores, there wasn t waers there, because the people of st. croix were sending it to st. thomas. now the families that had opened up their homes on st. croix for the young people on st. thomas to come and continue school,
of our utility system, 100%, is knocked out, is gone. our power authority is working feverishly to bring that up on line. in st. thomas, 70%. so we are really grateful that st. croix did not have the kind of devastation that the other islands did to ensure that that s kept up. yeah. and we are moving from there. but there is coordination. but you can see it from three tiers from the federal government providing support to local, and then the private sector connecting with local as well so that we can take care of what needs to be done. it is an awful lot of work ahead for the people of the u.s. virgin islands. congresswoman it s always a pleasure to talk. it s, theically good the see your face receipt now and it gives us a lot of hope about your fellow countrymen in the virgin islands. thank you again. we ll keep in close touch to you and we won t forget the people of the virgin islands and the rest of the caribbean in the days to come. thank you. coming up, lawmakers from