Latest / Rick Outzen: (we don’t) color on the dog / Gulf Breeze Recovers
Transcript
- Rick Outzen: Thank you for joining us. I'm Rick Altson. This is Rick's blog live. We're still recovering from the hurricane, and but fortunately the piles of limbs is getting smaller and smaller. Streets are getting clearer. You can move around better as we as we recover from this, but we will recover. The city of Gulf Breeze got hit particularly hard. We have a lot of trees, a lot of tree damage. We got with us Samantha Abel, the city manager. Samantha, thank you for joining us. Thank you, right? We're three weeks out from the storm. where does Guff Bree stand right now? Samantha Abell: Yes, so we were talking just before we aired that I've been on the Mississippi I'm sorry, on the Gulf Coast for twenty years now and boomerang back to Florida and I've responded to about twelve to fourteen different storms directly managed and the one thing that that, you know, has shown me is that you r you pre plan for the storm you think that you're going to get, right? We we always prepare for the storm we anticipate, but then you have to respond to the storm you actually get. And that's, w in this case the storm was full of surprises. And so leading up to it, we were preparing for a cat three. We you know, with our staff were looking at lessons learned from Ivan. And that is so important to be able to go back to your after action reports and you know, those lessons learned even when it's twenty years ago. And so, you know, we were putting, you know, generators out and pumps preparing for the storm surge just like our neighboring, communities. And then of course what we actually got was something, you know, almost like random tornadoes and we've all heard the the new term of of jet stinger, right? I don't think I'm wanting to learn anything new after all this time. And so I really feel like that was a foul on the field, you know Rick Outzen: And we had, we had always been taught that West is best. And we we would say once we heard we hated it to land anywhere, but as it was moving further east of us, we were thinking, Okay, we're we're gonna be okay. That's right. And then it was almost like the eye passed over us. That that twenty minutes of no wind with that led the beginning was like, you're right, being in the middle of the storm. And then having the eye and then have the wind shear completely disappear. Yes. Right after it. Samantha Abell: was, it was. And it it's always a natural disaster is always a test of the relationships that you build prior to the storm. Right. And so being able to communicate real time and know that everyone else is thinking the same thing and saying, we're feeling that that there's a shift. It's coming from the north. How can this be coming from the north? Right. And so that was very interesting real time to be having those conversations and you know, be communicating with our hospital and, you know, with the EOC and thinking this is a very different storm. So where we are now, of course, three weeks later is this is where our employees and those relationships really shine. We talk a lot about resilience. It's almost become a buzzword. Right. Everybody now talks about resilience, but but I do think that sometimes it's it's misused and and people think that well it's just about endurance or weathering through something, but it really is the measure of how quickly you bounce back. So this is when those relationships that we've built. our county and state partners, it's when they're tested and we're so very grateful for them. And we were also tack and talking prior to airing about engulfed breeze that you you see so much of neighbors helping neighbors Rick Outzen: You hear the chainsaws the next morning and everybody's w and and y'all did a great job of like one thirty in the morning. you had trucks going through the neighborhoods cleaning pathways on the streets. Yes. which was again something we'd never seen before. Those you had a lot of things work well, Samantha in Gulf Breeze. What could we do better? Samantha Abell: Yes, well, no matter no matter what your plans are, any time you have a natural disaster, it's gonna expose those vulnerabilities. And we spend a lot of time talking about that leading up to to a hurricane event. you know, that Friday, you know, as we were having our planning, I said this is the last time we're gonna all see each other until after this event. There's going to be mistakes that are made. We're all gonna fall back on the level of our training. Remember your training. And so I think that having good people well trained in those decision making roles really shined. But we boy, we had some curveballs. So I think by now most of the public know that our natural gas. We did not know that after Sally we had, you know, so many people in our or or so much growth in our service areas. And of course we serve both Penskola Beach and we stretch down to almost Navar. And and so for a period of time we our pressure dropped so low that we were not receiving natural gas ourself. Right. Our EOC was in the dark. Our police department, our fire department. So again, falling back on that relationship with the hospital for you know Julie Cardwell to be directly messaging me saying, we're okay for now, but how are you? Right. We don't have water and and you know we always want our hospital to be able to provide service. And so falling back on those types of relationships even during winter storm ENZO, you know, we put Julie Cardwell in an excavator to make sure she could get to the hospital that we, you know, cleared off the the helo pad there. So she knew she could get, you know, the straight talk from us. And and so that, you know, now it is very much about not just debris, but it's about our community's recovery. Rick Outzen: It is. You know, and Smith, thank you so much for coming on. It goes by really quick. you know, y'all you know the city's website, we've got that information up. Their Facebook page is full of a lot of information. You can go by Shoreline Park and you can see the debris piling up on one of the ball fields as they go to collect it. But y'all did a great job, Smith. Samantha Abell: Thank you, Vic. Appreciate you. Rick Outzen: always appreciate you. we're gonna go ahead and take a break. We'll be right back. I'm Rick Alson. This is Rick's Blog Live.