Foreign. From Washington, of course. We are all tracking Hurricane Idalia as it makes its way across Georgia and South Carolina after slamming into the Big Bend of Florida this morning with sustained winds north of 120 miles an hour. This is footage from Keaton beach as the then Category 3 storm came on shore.
This is the strongest hurricane to hit Florida's Big Bend. Right with a panhandle that meets the peninsula. Strongest hurricane hit that big bang in 127 years. These wild images out of Perry, Florida show you the extent of the wind damage alone as it basically destroys a local gas station and sends debris flying.
The storm surge has been, as was feared, catastrophic in certain areas. Slightly south in Cedar Key, it carried away an entire building on the property of a local inn. And here the images south of the storm hit out of Tampa, which avoided a direct hit but still faced widespread flooding on the dirty side of the storm. So they had a storm surge and swallowed entire roads in other areas.
So the damage is extensive and is still being assessed. Footage of some of the afternoon keep beach and drone footage of Crystal river shot by our NBC news team that you're watching here. Two deaths have been attributed to the storm so far according to local officials and NBC News count search and rescue efforts Runway in Parkland Springs and Fernando county. And the National Guard has already arrived in the hard hit town of Keaton beach to aid efforts there.
The Gunner Florida Ron DeSantis was on the ground in Perry last hour and praised the National Guard's readiness. We have many hundreds of National Guards just right here in Taylor County. This is kind of the ground zero deployment for them. And if there's more that's needed, we'll be able to search more accordingly.
We've activated 5,500 members of the Florida National Guard. We also have some of our members of the State Guard and then we have eight urban search and rescue teams. So we are well equipped to be able to respond to whatever comes down the pike today into tomorrow. And hopefully we're hoping for the best.
We're hoping that there's not going to be a need to use all those resources to effectuate rescue operations. But we'd rather be safe than sorry. More than275,000 people across Florida and another 180,000 in Georgia are without power right now as Georgia and South Carolina remain in the path of the storm. Dalia is expected to hit Savannah this evening and then move on through South Carolina.
You can see here the dirty side of the storm. Now it's really a wall up to Charleston, South Carolina, for what it's worth now, flooding already has begun in valley Georgia. And the governors of both states are warning residents, exercise caution. This is still a bad storm that's coming through.
And when you have a lot of rain, you have potential trees come down. We just got a report of someone we know that a tree just went through the roof in Valdosta. You know, so it's a dangerous storm. People need to prepare.
They need to be ready when it's coming. Anytime from about six o' clock on, everybody needs to really be on the guard and they need to go ahead and prepare. Right now, our team is all across the southeast following the path of the storm. Guan Vegas on the ground, Gainesville, Florida, where cleanup is beginning.
Kathy park is in Charleston, South Carolina as residents brace for the storm there. And I will now be joined by our NBC News meteorologists parents to break down the current status of this storm. Why don't we start with you in Gainesville. In some ways, if people want to try to get their bearings here, this storm, essentially, if you want to just talk about it through the prison of Florida State and the University of Florida, it went right in between Tallahassee and Gainesville, Chuck.
It did. The mayor was talking about his experience earlier, saying that originally they thought the storm was going to come right through Gainesville. At some point, he said he stepped out of the emergency room, came back and the storm had slightly moved. So now we're about 75 miles east of where the storm made landfall.
In fact, I think it's important to keep in mind that about a year ago we were all reporting on Ian, the hurricane that hit Florida and that storm, that hurricane is still fresh, a lot of people's minds. So when these evacuation orders went out yesterday, about 22 counties in Florida that had evacuation orders, a lot of people took it serious. And the state, as we can see, the governor has been doing press conferences all throughout the last 24 hours. The state was prepared.
We had the first responders waiting. The power companies had thousands of line and thousands of vehicles that came in from other states precisely to be ready to respond. So the storm as we know now, did not go directly through gamesco, but Gangster was bracing for it. A large part of the population here, of course, the students at uf, the university, asking them to hunker down.
So this became a ghost town last night, everyone waiting for the rain and the wind to make its way through. We did having for natal watch earlier today throughout most of the central part of Florida with Some point just south of us. But fortunately there was no major damage other than the trees that were reported that were damaged by the storm. Some damage to the power lines here.
The customers you've mentioned that have lost power, about 10,000 of them remain in this area around Gainesville, but they are working to restore that power. So the state has done a very good response assessing that damage. And here in Gainesville, everyone's going back to normal. There is a message for the residents here as they go outside, because you mentioned there's two deaths that were attributed to the storm.
One of those was in this area. And it was a driver that according to state troopers, was driving under very rainy conditions. So there are dangers with the wet roads and some tree. A lot of tree branches and other stuff that was blown into the road as a result of the storm shot.
I know you're into the harder parts. And Perry, earlier, just describe what you saw there. I'm curious. You know, I don't know whether Mother Nature is being favor the west coast of Florida or cruel.
It feels like every one of these hurricanes hits a different part of the Gulf coast over these last three or four years. So this was an area that hadn't been hit. Its infrastructure. How ready were they?
So, Chuck, yesterday we were in Citrus county, which is slightly southeast of a Perry, where that storm made landfall. We're very close to there. We were in one of these areas that the evacuation zone to zone A. Florida has different zone evacuation zones that have been presets.
So the area we're in was an area where residents had to evacuate. And like you mentioned, it seems like every week here reported an area that has never been hit by a hurricane. Of course, we can never predict these things. Last night we had a meeting.
We talked about where we thought the storm was going. We came to Gainesville because Gaines was one of the places that was bracing for the storm. Of course, now we know that the storm ended up moving into a different direction. So there's just no way to know.
What we know now is that the state was very prepared. Having the experience from Ian last year still fresh in people's minds. Well, look, that's one I believe everybody took a quick, harder right turn and then pounded Fort Myers, Naples area in a much tougher place. I'm glad to see the sunshine a little bit out there.
People trying to get back to normal there. Let's move over. Kathy park, where just the opposite. People are bracing now for what's to come.
And this is a strange one. Charleston is used to Worrying about Atlantic hurricanes. Here's something come across land that might have some hurricane force winds to it. Absolutely right.
Adalia is slowly making its way to our region, but it's still packing quite a punch. Right now we are starting to feel the outer bands of the storm. The rain has stopped for a bit, but the wind has really picked up. This is a preview of what's here in the low country.
Of course the concern is flooding and the timing of the storm is going to be pretty critical because high tide is said to happen closer to the 8, 9 o' clock hours. So it could worsen conditions here and only exacerbate the flooding, especially in the low lie areas. Behind me here is a Charleston harbor. You can see right now the water is pretty choppy.
But of course when there's high tide, this water could push along the sea wall and it could lead to a lot of problems, especially with homes along the battery here and farther inland. We know earlier today as we were driving around, a lot of the residents and store owners began putting sandbags in front of their businesses or from their homes along here. The batteries, some of the storm shutters are closed. So folks know the drill, they are prepared for what's a combo.
Once again, the big issue is flooding. We heard from the governor of South Carolina not too long ago and he also said from six o' clock on, the best advice is to stay indoors, don't chance it, just hunker down until the storm passes. Right now he anticipates the winds to pick up later on this evening, especially over an hour. So that could lead to down power lines as well as limbs, tree limbs.
The power outages were anticipated close to 200,000 statewide. So of course several hours ago before the storm supposed to make its way to this region. But once again, Chuck, we're starting to feel the impacts of the DALIA slowly but surely. But it appears based on what we have seen and the folks we've spoken with over the past few days, they are prepared and embracing for what's to come.
Well, it's all about how high the storm surge, tide, all that coming together and we will find out together. Kathy, you'll be safe as well as you're out there reporting on this course. Kathy, thanks very much. Let me bring in Bill, Karen there.
And Bill, let's start with Charleston because Charleston can fly on a Sunday, right? Like so. Here we go. And you know, there are so many questions about the storm for you that you're coming back a second time, but here we go.
What's happening. You know, how, how concerned are we about high tide and this storm hitting at the same time? The prediction right now, Chuck, is for Charleston at 8:30 this evening to have their seventh highest water ever measured in the city's history, which goes back, you know, over 120 years. So when you hear that stat you're like, okay, like that gets your attention.
You know, it won't be as bad as Hugo, which is their storm of record back in 1989. Probably about three or four feet under that. Just to give any locals kind of like an aspect of what to expect but be more similar to what we saw with Matthew possibly a couple years ago. And that was some serious water that went into homes and stuff on the coast.
Well, that was a hurricane that barely did wind damage but it caused all sorts of water havoc. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what this one's going to do. I'm not expecting mass power outages with this. The wind of died off.
They still kept it a barely low end category one hurricane. We haven't seen anyone close to that in a while. I think we're going to deal with 50 maybe 60 mile per hour winds. We will get some down trees in the coastal Carolinas and Georgia but we're not going to see anything mass power out and you can see this forecast.
The key here is going to be how quickly we can get the storm at. We only hit low tide, high tide is approaching. We'd like to get this through the fastest we can because if it's sitting in this area at 8pm Charleston tide, tide at 8:30. That means the wind is coming in at the strongest right before the storm, right at this blue moon high tide.
One of the biggest astronomical high tides in the high hurricane season is tonight and that's why we're having these issues. So Savannah, the key time for you is 7:37pm that's when you'll have your high tide and then Charleston at 8:24. Right now Charleston hasn't mentioned the predictions for you, Savannah. It looks like you would just be outside your top 10 all time for flooding.
Of course, obviously there's everywhere in between beautiful hill and headed areas too that we're concerned with. We haven't had a ton of tornado today. Doesn't mean we still won't. We have one active tornado warning to the west of Charlton.
This tornado watch goes out till about 10 o' clock this evening. We have had considerable flash flooding in the Valdosta area. We have two counties here in Georgia near Vidalia that have flash flood warnings. The storm's moving so fast that I'm not expecting widespread rainfall problems.
But anytime in the Carolinas, you can chance of getting 7 inches of rain in about 12 hours, that could also be a problem. But all eyes will be on the coast and what happens with this upcoming high tide. Look, I hesitate to. I want to frame this very carefully because I don't want people to think that we're downplaying the storm.
I don't want to downplay at all. But. But if this could have been more destructive, this could have hit more populated areas. We caught a little bit of a break here on this path, did we?
Not so far. You talk to anyone that's in Sarasota, St. Petersburg and Tampa and they're like, they thought for sure that their luck was going to finally run out. It's over 100 years since Tampa hit by a major hurricane.
You know, they dodged Ian last year, they dodged Irma, Willow went to the south of them that had numerous storms go up towards the Panhandle. So they thought maybe this was going to be theirs. But Tampa, you know, they had some minor coastal flooding, but the winds weren't that strong. So yeah, I'd say for the millions of people that live in one of those populated cities and probably one of the most flood prone areas that we have in this country, it looks like they lucked out on another storm.
I mean, it shipped this thing 50 miles and we would have been talking about this devastating thing that hit north a week. Yeah, we could have north, frankly. I mean, because Tallahassee. One more question for you on this storm itself in particular.
Hurricanes do crazy things, right? They never follow the normal. This thing is, it's doing a weird loop. It's going south again.
When it gets to the Atlantic, how long will it go south? I'm just curious. There are no computer models that take it off the outer banks and then actually strengthen it and bring it back. It does look like it's going to head off the coast.
It gets in what we call weak steering current. It's probably still going to be a tropical storm, but it's just going to kind of sit there and spin. It's not going to reintensify. It probably will linger off the coast.
Nothing. Surely back at the US We've had it before. So we've had storms come off the coast loop all the way back, but we've never had one do it and be meaningful. Well, you know, it's kind of like an interesting thing.
Like that's kind of crazy, but instead of like doing damage. So, yeah, I'm not concerned about it. And old Florians in the 60s will tell you the story of Hurricane Betsy one day. But anyway, that's a little easy too.
Look up easy. Yeah. Parents, I'll see you in a few minutes. Talk a bit more about the changing nature of storms heating the state of Florida.
But that's in another segment. Thank you. Let me turn now to the Tampa area with Rob Herrings. Public information offered for Hillsborough county fire rescue.
Look, I don't want to minimize anything you're dealing with here, but the Hillsborough county dodged somewhat of a bullet. You tell me how the county held up today. We did. And I can tell you that Hillsborough County Fire Rescue is wrapping up the mobilization of all the extra personnel that we brought in for the event.
All the technical search and rescue teams that we had positioned throughout the county, all of our boat assets are returning. So, yeah, again, that was just spoken. Tampa Dodge, another one. That's, that's a blessing and a curse because it's good that it happened.
But you know, it adds to the lore of the bubble that exists over Tampa Bay. It's funny you say that. I grew up in Miami and we went 30 years without a storm and people just got used to it. And then Andrew came and people weren't prepared.
That to me seems to be the biggest challenge you're going to have going forward in Hillsborough county is convincing people. I mean, I'd love some scientific research to figure out what protects Tampa Bay because it's amazing. But I do think you have to worry about that, that people are going to start to believe that they're protected. You're exactly right, Chuck.
And that's one of the challenges for us as far as messaging, getting that message out. And I'm hopeful that, you know, today and the events over the last 24 to 36 hours, I've kind of demonstrated to those in those low lying vulnerable areas what four to six feet does. And so if they have that kind of as a, as a benchmark foundation and here comes a more major storm with a more direct hit on the Tampa. Now we're reporting 10 to 15ft.
Maybe they can put two and two together and figure out, well, four to six feet when this far 10 to 15 is going to be devastating, I need to get out. Let me ask you this, are you guys being asked to help in other areas to the north now? So now that we're done protecting the Hillsborough county area, our urban search and rescue team is going to what's called go green. So we'll have a state that we're available for deployment, for helping in the state, part of the state that was affected.
So, yes, let me ask you this. You learned something from every one of these preparation processes that you have to go through. Anything you learn on this one that says, hey, you know, we probably should have done this better or this better. I'm just curious.
You know, I think. I think from our side, I think we did okay. I think we did. You know, we were well prepared from the county.
And if I rescue, I would like to think that, you know, we sent out all of our technical search and rescue teams and needs assessment teams and, you know, didn't find any real threats to public safety out there. Maybe it wasn't a big enough event. Maybe the messaging got through and some folks did evacuate. But, you know, we're going to err on the side of caution.
And, you know, that bubble and that luck just. Just continues here in Tampa. But I think we, you know, we were ready. We were prepared to protect our citizens and respond as necessary.
So moving forward, like you said, it's going to be. We got to get through to that. To that stubborn floridity. And he doesn't want to go anywhere from that level A, level B evacuation zone.
One other challenge you have is the way these Gulf storms develop. They go from zero to hurricane in, like, three days. You know, when you're watching on the Atlantic side, you're like, oh, oh, that storm's gonna miss the peninsula and it's gonna veer into the Gulf. And the point is, everybody, you would have a week.
The systems have a week to sort of. Okay, where are we short on personnel? You don't have that luxury with the way these storms develop in Yucatan. You really don't.
And, you know, we were just talking about that, how quickly this. This game has come and gone. Now, like you said, Ian, Irma. Irma took forever, it seemed like, but we had time.
And maybe, you know, coming on the heels of Ian threatening our area last year, we had a lot of processes that we just put in place in practice. So kind of like, you know, not knocking off much dust off the playbook that we just used a year ago. So you're exactly right. These.
These Gulf storms are the most dangerous, in my opinion. They spin up fast, they spin up big, they spin up intense. I mean, that. That storm went to what, cat 3, cat 4, almost.
Cat 4, in. In a matter of a couple days. Astonishing. And it's up.
And actually, I'VE got other people back in to sort of explain how is it almost like a describe it like a pinball machine down there. All of a sudden somebody launches one of these storms and it's like we have to brace ourselves. Anyway, glad everything's good, Hillsboro. And let's hope that people still learn a lesson or two.
Thanks. Come up. We got a live breaking news coverage per It'll continue. Another city of docks available today as well.
We're taking to the White House the latest on the federal response. You watch these press. Welcome back. We're following Hurricane Agalia as Florida continues to feel the impact of the storm in both Georgia and South Carolina are obviously getting hit hard as well in the city's history.
Fortunately, the city was able to avoid the worst path from this storm. But thousands of the areas were power power lines and trees were down in the storm floor for 30 cases of a tree that fell next to the governors mentioned earlier today. So let's go to Tallahassee, Florida. We have Maddie Vespa there reporting on the ground.
And as gwach report from Gainesville, as I was describing this, Florida State on one side, University Florida on the other in this hurricane just missed both campuses it seems. Yeah, I clearly wanted to split the difference as far as allegiance goes between those schools in Tallahassee. Officials here are very blunt. They said essentially they feel like they really were mercifully spared by this storm.
You talk about the fact that this one, the hardest one severe storms of tiny McLaulin area. That's because it typically doesn't get hit by storms of this severity. Just the fact that the city was in the crosshairs of this storm as of yesterday morning, meaning people only had about 24 hours before they realized it could attract that far west. That was rare.
Okay. So people here in the capital city of Florida, as you point out, Florida State, Florida A and M campuses very close to where we are actually those shut down government buildings shut down. You saw Governor DeSantis press conferences earlier today, including the one where they lost power mid press conference. That was here in Tallahassee as well.
So right now kind of the focus here in Tallahassee is also a focus statewide and that is seeing the power turned back on and in some cases getting cell service back up, specifically in Perry, Florida communications there are really tough. Our crews have had a tough time throughout the day. Cell service largely gone there. And then we have talked about just power across the city and across the state.
I just checked the Tallahassee cities utility's website Basically they have about 25,000, give or take, that still don't have power. Based on their outage map, statewide crews say according to governor's office, they have restored power for well over a quarter of a million people just a day. So since this storm moved through, crews have been out restoring power for a quarter of a million people so far. But by our count that's not even halfway.
That's not even half the job they have yet to do. Of course, everybody here knows the vast majority of the worst devastation is farther east, farther south, areas like Tampa where the storm has, you know, just wielded insurmountable damage and has turned deadly. And I assume, Talia, you're seeing more downed trees because this is one of those, it's obvious that you say it, which is, doesn't get hit by many storms. Yeah, has more tree growth.
So a, you know, a tropical storm is going to have more impact there than it would down in South Florida when you get. All the time. Exactly. Mansion.
That's a hundred year old oak tree. I think they said it's a century old. That's what happens to your point when you don't get hit by storms of this magnitude. Trees have that time to grow so they're taller.
Oftentimes they're weaker. And yeah, that was a huge concern going to the, going to the storm this morning. And crews are out kind of doing this evaluation in real time. We're getting updates and kind of still building a lot of causes, but there are a lot of these power outages that was indeed the suspected cause.
Had a diagnosis if you will. There's those falling trees. That's why you can't just blow off a Cat one storm if you've never experienced any hurricanes before. Thank you.
I'm stick with Tallahassee as our date line here. John Daly with us. He's the mayor of Tallahassee. Mayor Daly, let me start with you, Mayor Daily.
I'm sure that's the first time, not a bad, not bad way to be remembered, I think. Let me ask you this. How much of Tallahassee has buried power lines? So the percentage of most of Tallahassee does above ground power lines.
We require all new development and redevelopment to be buried and we have been working for many years now to bury our power lines. It is such an expensive proposition in our community. It's well over, well over $100 million position. So.
But we are actively and aggressively trying to bury the power line, especially with new development, redevelopment. What would you say? Obviously we just had Report. You said it yourself, this could have been more devastating.
You guys are prepared for more. What have you learned from this storm and what is the damage? Well, I give a full credit to our leadership varsity manager and the amazing men and women that work in the utility department. We started planning and preparing for the storm as soon as we heard about it, started communicating with the public immediately.
As you know, there's 200,000 people in Tallahassee. At 100,000 in the incorporated student population is 70,000. We gotta keep them safe. I think one of the key differences that we did was we tripled the size of our electric utility department immediately by calling in our mutual aid agreements as far away as Nebraska, Oklahoma, Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana.
And those additional crews arrived in Tallahassee, we were able to put our assets all over. And as soon as the storm passed and it was safe, they've been out restoring power. Chuck all in on this. One third of our customer base lost power.
And we are the largest utility provider in the Big Bend area to this moment. I think we're about 65, 70% restored. That shows you how hard this men are working right now. We ask you about the prevention issues.
You talked about the expensive bearing power lines. Look here in the mid Atlantic we got hit pretty hard this summer and you're now seeing a lot of people are trimming trees slower than they've ever done before. What kind of tree preventive measures are you guys thinking about any of that going forward here? Because again I go back to a conversation earlier.
I mean these Gulf storms, they come out of nowhere now and they come from zero hurricane in a matter of hours sometimes, right? Well, with the new technology it is important that we keep being aggressive with bearing the power lines when we can. But it's, it's also a cost issue that as a community we need to continue to have that conversation. Check.
Also thing what's interesting is, is think about it, the intensity and the size of the storms these years. Look, I've been a local elected official for 17 years and it seems that every year the storms are becoming bigger, more intense. Even our rainstorms and you grew up in Miami, you know what those summertime rainstorms are like. We used to use the measure of the 100 year storm event.
Now we are having 100 year storm event events on a regular basis during the summer with our, with our rainstorm. So yes, we need to keep moving forward with technology, new trimming practices. We want to take care of our trees, but we want to make sure that people have electricity as well. The look, I don't mean to go back to this bearing power line issue because it was such a movement in South Florida.
It really, you know, it does make getting the power back on faster and things like that. Is there any, you know, is there state money that you could ask for to do this? Is there? Or is this more of an issue of residents fighting it?
I know that's where that could happen in Sunday roads. Oh, no. I think that the city of Tallahassee is wide open bearing the power lines. The question is how are we going to pay for it?
And you're absolutely correct. We have open lines of communication with the governor's office and our state delegation working through the legislative process to see if there's money available. We have open lines of communication. I enjoy talking to the White House today when they called the check on our community as well and to see what federal monies are also available.
But you also have to understand that when you have a property tax revenue of $56 million coming in based on your property taxes, but it's going to cost over $100 million plus to bury your power line since a budget issue and that's a community conversation we have to continue. Yeah. Well, perhaps insurance companies, more insurance companies will come in the state to insure our property if we bury the power lines. I'm just asking.
Here we go. I mean, is there a quick pro quo here? I mean. Yeah.
Anyway. It's a ballpark range. Right. Anyway, there you go.
Absolutely. I love the analogy of split the difference between University of Florida and Florida State University with the storm not taking sides and obviously. Well, most hurricanes they care about. You know, never mind.
I was gonna make another football analogy. That will not a good day to do that. Mary John Daily, thank you and I appreciate it. Stay safe.
Thank you. Up next, President Biden promises federal support hurricane recovery while addressing two deadly disasters. From White House today Watch. Welcome back.
This is of course going to be a response to hurricane that's under break in the White house. More than 1500 federal personnel around the ground in the Southeast including teams of Coast Guard members position for search and rescue. More than 1.3 million meals and 1.6 million liters of water are ready for distribution. Speaking this afternoon, President Biden said he's been in contact with governors of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
I let each governor I spoke with. No, if there's anything, anything the states need right now, I'm ready to mobilize that support of what they need. So Germany, our senior White House correspondent Kelly o' Donnell and Kelly, look, there's two, you know, basically one end of the, of, of the country to the. All the way to the other end of the Pacific here.
Two massive federal responses going on. What do you have to say about Hawaii as well, when you think about other places that many other Americans choose to go to visit for vacation and so forth? So Hawaii and Florida have a large identity among many Americans. Because of that, the president focused on saying he's been in touch with all the governors involved, that his federal resources from across the different agencies that are responsible will provide what is needed urgently.
He emphasized that he's asking these governors, what do you need right now to try to get it there? At the same time, he acknowledged that when it comes to Hawaii, there is a need for patience because the level of rebuilding that will be required is so extraordinary. He emphasized that he wants it to be done in a way that was better than what was lost, but also honoring the wishes and the history and the needs of the people who make Lahaina in particular and Maui home, home. So trying to urge patience there with respect to the unfolding Idaho hurricane, trying to focus on the need for people to listen to the rules in their communities and to also know that federal resources are available.
So this shows a test of leadership in many ways. The president was asked by reporters if he detected any politics in his personal phone call with Governor DeSantis. Obviously, both men and put themselves forward to be candidates in 2024. And the president was.
Kevin said he trusts that DeSantis is dealing with him as a leader and not seeking political advantage in the moment. That might be something that for many people who get jaded about our politics, might be glad to hear that. Well, but I'm gonna get a free J about our politics, Kelly, and that is disaster religion relief. Already I've noticed today, Marco Rubio, senator from Florida, said that he was in favor of decoupling Ukraine funding and disaster relief.
We know the Biden administration doesn't want to decouple that for obvious political reasons. Ukraine funding not popular among House Republicans. They're worried about getting through. Attaching it to disaster recovery is a tried and tested method in the House.
Is it going to work this time? Well, that is a pressing question. And part of what FEMA is also telling us is that their reserves are down to about $3 billion, which is a big number in almost any other context except disaster recovery, where they need resources. And the president was asked today by our colleague Peter Alexander about will there be enough money to respond to these things.
And the president says he's going to have to really push on this. And, and decoupling is a tough question that gets down to a very granular level where you have certain lawmakers who for their own home district needs, don't want to be in favor of Ukraine support in this military context. And at the same time, almost every member of Congress at some point or another will need to have disaster relief for their own community. And it puts pressure on them to look at this with that in mind.
Look, we gotta start talking about FEMA budgeting not just as disaster relief, but potentially disaster preparedness. You know, is it FEMA that helps assess varying power lines, things like that, but projects that do, in fact, make things better when crises hit? That's what, in theory, you want the federal government to be assisting your state and local leaders on. But again, as I said before, pay grade.
We're here to observe the report. Thanks very much. After the break. How Dalia became the strongest hurricane to hit Florida's big band in more than a century and how the changing climate, climate change is feeling faster and more dangerous storms, particularly in the Gulf.
Let's do it. You're watching me. Welcome back. Dalia is the first major hurricane in our Appalachian Bay since 1851, when record keeping began.
It was only six years after Florida officially became a state. But it's also the fifth hurricane to hit Florida's west coast in just the last eight years. Hermine in 2016, Irma in 2017, Michael in 2018, Ian in 2022, and now Adalia in 2023. Joined now by our meteorologist here at MC News, Bill.
Karen's going to. Bill, this is what I want to sort of. And you're right where I want to be. What is happening there?
The Yucanang Peninsula, it feels like I've described it, almost like a pinball machine. The little place where you just launch the pinballs and they just sort of launch these low pressures. It's like up there's a low and then you check back the next morning and it's a hurricane. What's the secret down there?
What's going on? Yeah, I mean, I always have a rule of thumb, chunk. And any storm enters the Gulf of Mexico, nothing good ever happens because it just can't escape the water so warm that it almost always develops. So let me just take a look first at this storm and what happened with it.
So, yes, it was just kind of meandering. Your Cancun has Malfoy all the past weekend and then we started heading north. We colorized the water here to show you how warm it is. And the water temperatures are at record level.
So we knew once the storm started to get developed, if the upper level winds of a roll, it would just take off like a rocket ship. That's exactly what happened. We were actually lucky that it was moving at about 10 to 15 miles per hour. This has been a slow moving storm.
It just would have kept growing even stronger than it did. So it started at 70 mile per hour winds yesterday and then this morning it was up to 120. So that's pretty rare. Rapid intensification means 35 miles per hour in 24 hours.
This went up by 50 mile per hour winds in a little 24 hours. So that's only happened like someone mentioned 10 times in like the history of all storms. And I made this graphic for you. I know you showed those pictures here, but here's Florida and here's all the hurricanes that have hit since 2016.
You see that was Irma, this one was Ian, this was Adalia, obviously this was Michael, the category five. Then we had two non major hurricanes. That was Hermin and Sally. And only one of the them, Sally came, you know, the typical, what we call route going from the Bahamas through South Florida and into the Gulf, kind of like Katrina did.
But lately all these recent ones came from the Gulf side. And we've had a lot of major hurricanes. I mean four of these, six since 2016 have all been, you know, monster storms making landfalls at an unprecedented time. And this doesn't even take an effect.
Our friends in Louisiana, who, they went through just an epic period of big storms hitting that, you know, four or five years ago. And this is just all due to the warming Gulf. Right? And how much has the Gulf warmed over the last 30 years?
The Gulf has warmed considerably, especially, you know, I'd say the last 10 years. I don't have a specific number for you on that unfortunately. But you know, a lot of people want to just, you know, say, hey, this is climate change. We have to deal with this every year.
The fact with tropical cyclones is worldwide. Remember climate change, we have to picture it worldwide. Everyone wants this associated with what happened in their backyard yard. But the number of cyclones and typhoons and hurricanes has not been increasing across the globe.
That's just a fact. We can't argue that we can see with satellites. But here near us in the Gulf and on the east coast, we've actually been seeing a high number of major and strong storms recently. So yeah, we can't just nitpick and cherry pick the numbers because it's happening here globally.
That's not a trend, it's a, I guess it's another, it's a climate shift. I guess in the years to come it could be we're just in this shift right now. Bill Karen's a little more of the science behind all this Bill, thank you. Join me on the phone is the mayor of Horseshoe Beach Florida.
It's Jeff Williams. He just was out touring the damage in his town and Mayor Williams, you shared a few photos with him and they're just heartbreaking. It's just devastating. But you tell me you just did a tour of your town as it is.
It looks pretty devastating. It is very devastating. It is sad to see and it's difficult to try to grab your, wrap your arm around what we're going to have to do to rebuild but we will do that. How communications on the ground?
What would you say? Are you able to get to everybody you're trying to get to or do you still need some more help on that? Well I would say to. That is our focus the last two days prior to storm was preparing for after the storm we were comfortable, confident that storm was going to affect us so we did preparations for ahead of the post storm knowing what we were gonna have to do so we did that yesterday our entire focus was to get every citizen out of Horseshoe beach and we had some people, some, some old timers here that went through multiple storms and they were a little hard headed but at the end of the day by midnight last night we had every single citizen out of our town except one.
Well let's look. You just saw the data station. Can you imagine if they didn't evacuate? Oh we've from the, from what I can tell right now we probably lost 50 homes that are totally gone.
Nothing but a flap. There weren't humans in those buildings local. Exactly right. They can come back.
They're still alive. They can come back and rebuild but, but, but they are alive and they're safe. What kind of updates do you have? When can people come back?
Are you already starting? Yeah, we, I came in about three hours ago with the emergency management folks and the citizens started coming in about an hour ago and right now we're just. We had to get the roads passable and get power. We have a lot of power lines down so we had to get those secured but the people are now coming back and, and obviously we have no power, we have no water at the time but we you know, it's just a matter of clean up now and pick up the pieces.
MAYOR JEFF Williams, Horseshoe beach we'll be following you will be hopefully, hopefully all the, all the help is there and coming if it's not there and you know, glad to know that people did evacuate and I think you're showing the proof of why you need to evacuate. Thank you, sir. Good luck. All right, thank you.
Bye. Silicon Governing in a disaster a potential test regarding DeSantis as he steps off the campaign trail to handle this hurricane. And another frightening moment. The Senate Republican leader Michelle Khan appeared to freeze again while talking to reporter's second time that's happened this month.
Welcome back. As you saw earlier, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is off the campaign trail obviously this week to deal with the state's response recovery hurricane A diet represents another tester opportunity depending on your point of view. As he pushes his record and his competence as governor Forbes tried to make a centerpiece of his campaign. So a little politics here at the end of the show.
During the onset, Benji Sorna, Washington beer chief for Semaphore, an NBC News bloking out alum Eugene Robinson, Washington Post and NBC News local analyst Danny Pleco, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a friend of the Look, Benji, these moments they can look I think Jeb Bush got his brother reelected in Florida in 2004 with his confidence. In many ways it sort of sealed the deal. You can, you can, you can accomplish a lot. You can really send a message of competency or incompetency when it comes to sorts.
Absolutely. Jeb Bush is one of the first politicians you think of as someone who benefited from disaster politics. I think they called him the hurricane governor and six over and over and over again. And it was even years and years later when he ran for president.
And I talked to voters in Florida who did the first thing they bring up. Oh, we love Jeb Bush. Now how did that translate? Obama hired Jeb Bush's female emergency coordinator to run female.
You might have surging approvals in your state. People might remember. Does that translate anywhere else? I mean Jeb Bush found out not so much.
Blair always addressed in hearing how he did in some other state in Chris Christie's case after Sandy was even a negative in some ways because Republican Soaman is too close to Obama during response and we've seen this. You know Danny, I remember look, Hurricane Andrew recovery became more politicized as we went a second, a third and a fourth week without power. Like sometimes these things all Go well in the first week and all of a sudden, hey, where's the cavalry? What isn't politicized now?
I mean, we are talking about the politics of the weather at this point. So I'm willing To bet for DeSantis, however, this is his sweet spot. He's well liked in the state of Florida. He's competent at this sort of thing.
No man doesn't like putting a windbreaker on and getting out there with the reporters, the wind in his hair, looking like he's political, like he doesn't play politics. I noticed that like when he's been with Biden, they don't know that there's punishment to be had to do it. I mean, thank heaven for small favors, right? I mean, really, you got the punts to do politics when, you know, when they acted like adults, they acted like adults.
I mean, look, we're fortunate with the hurricane, right? It hit in probably the least populated close line. Weird way to say if you could pick the one place to do the least amount of potential widespread. Exactly.
But a hurricane hitting Florida, that's all that the horseshoe goes up to those people. But there are not as many of them as there would be any place else on the Florida coast. And so, you know, in a sense we dodge bully. Should be thankful for that.
We are petrified for our friends at Charleston. I mean, this is such a bizarre circumstance. High. It floods when the sun shines, right?
It floods when the sun shines and it's humid and it's high tide. You know, I mean it's just so it's going to really flood. All right, let's get back to what if they want to the league stories all day today. It's Senate Republic Leader another moment, uncomfortable moment where he appeared to freeze.
Let me play a bit of it. What are your thoughts on running for running for reelection in 2026? Did you hear the question? Senator running for re election in 2026.
All right, I'm sorry, you all read. Two things I want to say here. McConnell said he momentarily felt lightheaded but now feels fine. And apparently he's talked to Benji, Jonathan, John Barrasso, their spokespeople say, hey, he sounded like Mitch McConnell in there second time of the month.
Yeah, and it sounds extremely similar to the previous one too where he also was able to talk to reporters even later that same day. But it played out. It looked, looked identical, but it's just reinforcing the reality here. He's an 81 year old man who suffered a serious fall earlier this Year.
And I'm sure everyone in the Senate, including those people you named, who are often named as his potential successor, are thinking about what comes next. Gene, Every time the older, he's only one year older than the President. You know, this is just as I say, our job is to observe a report sometimes and this is, we're observing and it's very, very difficult to look at. It really is.
It's, you know, this can't, assumes this can't continue. I know he's getting the best. Is it in the best interest of the Senate or the Senate Republic? I don't, it's hard to say.
I don't know. It's not in the best interest of the Senate or the country. It's not. I can't imagine it's in the best interest of Mitch McConnell, you know, to have these episodes like that and just, even if he's just thinking about his legacy, this is not the way he would want to go out.
I mean, these are all uncomfortable conversations. They are uncomfortable conversations and it was really awful to watch my heart get out to him and his family as a human being. But this is increasingly the way we feel when we watch all of our senior most politicians, all this Chuck Schumer, right. How old was Nancy Pelosi?
How old is Joe Biden? How old is Donald Trump? Maybe it's time for us to start talking about a moment when we need a newer generation. Maybe there should be age limits.
This is not an unpopular thing, the age limitation. You ask it, you know, it's, it gets quickly in more moments like this and it's there and when I hear this. But Every time Mitch McConnell has a bad moment like this, this doesn't help the President. No, it does definitely fit this theme.
And you've seen some politicians seize on it. Nikki Haley, for example, was a politician whose style you very well might associate with. Mitch McConnell was pretty shockingly blunt the last time this happened with him. And saying this just shows we need, you know, a new generation.
There's definitely see some politicians starting to send some things in the wire. Look, I, I wouldn't, I don't know how the party's gonna handle this, Danny, but if you told me there were public resignation calls now, it wouldn't surprise me. It was the second episode of Diane Feinstein where you saw Democrats start to call on her. I think it's much more a question of the conversation he's gonn have privately in his caucus about what it is that neurologists say is going on.
What is really happening. Is this just an episode or is there something more? And I think there's something more important. There is nobody in this town more of a political creature than Mitch McConnell.
He is, Mitchell, political creature. And so even if he thinks the time is right, even if he wants to step down, he's going to be figuring out what's the right juncture, when do we move, what's good for the party, what's good for the Senate. But when you think that everything has to happen, we're running out of time. If you're the White House, what do you think of Mitch McConnell?
You want to try to do another fellow without Mitch McConnell? You want to try to sort of get through. That's not something they would look forward to. Everything that's so hard about Mishmicol, everyone's taken him for granted.
Alonso Magic, whenever you think of him. When it comes to just getting the trains for on top, life happens. Benji, Jean, Danny, thank you. Thank you all for being with us this hour.
We'll be back tomorrow with only press. Now NBC News NOW coverage continues with more on the Soren. Callie jackson. He was a young Marine.
She didn't care about convention. They made a life together. Then one night the Marine died. And then the death investigation took a wild, unexpected and utterly bizarre turn.
I'm Josh Makowitz and this is Trace of Suspicion, an all new podcast from Dayline. Listen to all episodes of Trace of Suspicion. Now, wherever you get your podcasts.