Latest / Rick Outzen: (we don’t) color on the dog / Escambia’s Hurricane Recovery
Transcript
- Rick Outzen: Welcome back. I'm Rick Altson. This is Rick's Blog Live. We have been covering the recovery from the hurricane. There's a lot going on in the community. And just go to the county's website, go to the City of Pensacola's website, or go to the blog, and we try to get you the latest information on what's happening in the community. The person who led Escambia County through the emergency management emergency that we had is Eric Gilmore, Public Safety Director, and we've got Eric with us now. Eric, thank you. Public Safety Director Eric Gilmore: Thanks for having me. So Rick Outzen: where are we now? Where is the Scambria County in in the world? Public Safety Director Eric Gilmore: Recovery. Collective sigh of relief. where we're at in recovery is at this time we're still waiting on our presidential our major declaration from the president, the IAPA. so we're waiting on that. We hope to hear something this week that we'll get IAPA. we're of course doing debris cleanup. If you can't notice that the true the trucks are all out there, debris on the side. so we're in cleanup and we're in we're in a long term recovery now. So we've done our response. we've done all the life safety, we've done the short term recovery where we've got people the immediate needs without the the the without the water that they didn't have or the power they didn't have, so now we're at the end of that, they've got water and power. I still think there's some residents out there that cannot receive power because the weatherhead's pulled down and they need a licensed electrician to help out, but they're working on that. But collectively we're past that and now we're waiting on that meeting with your insurance, getting your s your property fixed, getting your everything's picked up and trying to get us back to normal as we can and Waiting on the IAPA is waiting you know, if your insurance doesn't fully cover your your losses, getting FEMA here with IA will help bridge that gap with some SBA laws or some other governmental assistance. So we're waiting on that right now. So we're waiting on. Well last Rick Outzen: So a a f a week ago Friday, we were able to get the you know, we would the governor app made the request for the emergency declaration. So that was a big first step that helped us a lot. You know, for our for our viewers, this is y'all begin preparing way before Friday when this storm hit. Walk just a little bit as as y'all began to understand it was coming to Northwest Florida. We still didn't know quite where. But but how the levels of activation that y'all go through. Public Safety Director Eric Gilmore: No, absolutely. That's a good question. So we actually started Monday of that week. Monday was just a team and public safety team surround each other. We sit down in a room, I lead it with my fire chief, EMS chief, and everybody, and we talk through a scenario. We talk about and of course we have Scotland Wilson. Right. Which is great. We have a meteor audience on staff, so she can absolutely kinda give us the guidance or where we're going. then by Tuesday we that Monday we had f we had planned our upstaffing, our potential needs. And then had a discussion about who we need to bring in Tuesday for the next level discussion. So Travis brought the operational pieces for all the outside agencies at law enforcement, hospitals, ECUA utilities and everything to come in a room and let's all talk collectively together and get on a conference call with Mobile Weather to see what they're saying and then have Scotland break it down. And then Wednesday we brought all our partners in, operational and non-operational, and our Red Cross and everybody who's in in our long-term recovery groups. to all had that big discussion that meet would do a state meeting on a state webinar and with mobile weather. And then by Thursday we had locked in who's gonna be there, who's gonna do what, identified every all the trigger points that we were gonna have. Cause it was still playing around with is it going to go east of us? Is it gonna go west of us? And of course we'd like to hear we're gonna be on the west side of the storm, but I don't know if we gonna want that anymore. Rick Outzen: That's sure. Public Safety Director Eric Gilmore: I mean that's changed now. It really has. So a storm's a storm now we're gonna treat a storm like a storm and w west side east side doesn't matter. We're gonna but we planned for a category three during the from Monday through Wednesday and then shoring everything up Thursday and then Thursday afternoon getting a final briefing from Mobile Weather and National Weather Service about this is where you're gonna see it. we had everything locked in, trigger points, all our partners, and they knew so we was at level three activation, which is always monitoring. We're always at a level three. we dropped to a level two Thursday. Thursday morning we went level two with those necessary resources. Rick Outzen: The lower the number, the more Public Safety Director Eric Gilmore: Death call yeah, exactly. You're going down. Right. And then Friday morning was level one. That means when we're at level one activation, we are twenty four hour operation, alpha bravo, twelve hours chest, seven A to seven P, seven P to seven A. So that's how that's how we scaled it up th throughout the week in anticipation of the storm coming in. Rick Outzen: it for for viewers if you haven't s the inside the EOC there's it's the media's in a little bitty room, but the everyone else is in a huge room that at times feels like it's as big as the floor of the Bay Center. It's not quite. and you have all these stations where you've got hospitals, schools, business, utilities where so you can go to a desk and it and each desk should have own phones Everybody that's that they're talking to, like the hospital should have everybody there. And for y'all, it's it gives you that ability that when the storm is coming in, you can try to get updates, not a lot you can do, but then after the storm that's that immediate that immediate assessment that has to happen. That's gotta be a little bit chaotic, isn't it? Public Safety Director Eric Gilmore: It's just a little bit. 'Cause everybody's trying to feed in at one time and that's fine because we want that information. And we need that information so we can go for those the major declaration. But we also use a software web web EOC. Okay. So every agency uploads their agency information into there and puts it on the dashboard for the operational pieces of the EOC to look at. So they've got it all over the That's exactly right. So we can look at it real quick, real time, see what's going on, what's up, what's down. but what what's What's really chaotic is when you're running the event and so the storm had passed through by eight thirty the afternoon. We had emergency services out doing their thing, doing rescues and on the backlog nine one one calls. so my s myself and fire chief Adam Harrison went out to evaluate and look, see what we really have going on out there d' to try to guide the crews on what they needed to be doing. when we came back and this n you know, the crews are doing, they're stood up, it's running great. everything's flicking along and you know, it's it's like one of these bad scenarios or bad things, bad exercises where they keep adding injects to you. Right. They said, by the way, we just dropped water at all three of our hospitals and he like so now we gotta all right, let's fix that. So how do we go from there? So but having all those pieces in that room allows us real time. We knew the all three hospitals, all three hospital representatives there. Right. We heard from all three of them. We had ECUA in our room. So we're going over ECUA. Hey guys, what's going on? So have this crucial to have those elements there. So when we have something in the community like that, we can just walk across the room versus having to get somebody on the phone. Right. Or something like that. And get real time information going and how to fix it. So Rick Outzen: Well, and I think the other thing that was helpful through the process is I think b the city having its own emergency management added was a great compliment. So having both really good real time press releases, emails going out from both agencies, both parts helped. the press conferences in in everybody I'm I am not a happy camper at press conferences. Because my job is to get information and under your leadership this time, there was there wasn't any foo foo type stupid announcement that everything's fine. We we got everyone c could answer questions, we got a real idea what was going on. I think cat country being there in the EOC, they were able to get it broadcast, that made a huge difference. but if we were getting good information And being able to relate back to you, say, hey, wait, what do you you know, I remember you and I sitting down and we're talking that wait, I think we got a real issue with the with having traffic lights out and people not understanding it's a four way stop. Absolutely. You know, and then 'cause that's the the the the back and forth. We hear stuff too that we can bring. Right. And then I think probably the biggest takeaway, and you and I've talked about it too before we even did this interview, was we gotta have internet at the table. Cell companies did it. 'Cause If we got too many things in our homes that depend on Wi Fi. Public Safety Director Eric Gilmore: We do. so you know, as you done taught before that you're absolutely right. We had to we're reevaluating what really need so to us priority utilities were water and power, right? Right. So now we're sitting there looking at everything that the internet's hooked to, to even the life saving devices. some people sit in home with stuff like that. so having that not only that, that's how people get their streaming services or they get their T V or their notification. Exactly. So right as we speak today I've got those companies coming into DOC. I my emergency manager Travis Tompkins trying to sort us things up. So we have a representative sitting there so we can see real time how quickly they're gonna get up and what's delaying them and have those big conversations as well. So we yeah, so we're we're always learning something. We we don't get it right every time. And and but when we learn something we do try to evaluate how we could do it better and make it better for next time. So Rick Outzen: All right, we we d we last question I think in looking at this is is I think and and this is really not a question, this is a compliment. You've done a really good job over the last few years where we've had a lot of near misses and we didn't have we hadn't had a hurricane since Sally until this this month, but you have always sent teams out and y'all learn you you trained your staff on other people's disasters. Public Safety Director Eric Gilmore: That's absolutely right. we sc we hired Scotland, Isaiah, even Tama with several new people. And even Travis needed some a more real field experience. Those guys during the last two years, he went to Hurricane Milton, Hurricane Helene, and Travis went to State DOC with me doing logistics and Ian. Travis and I was in LaFette County and did your radio interview. but yeah, our our team has gotten out there and the administration's allowed them to get out there and it they see what's going on. They can actually take what They could put their hands and arms around it and bring it back versus a theory of what I'm telling you on how this is Rick Outzen: I've seen this before. Public Safety Director Eric Gilmore: No, I've been in it and now I know. And that makes a world of difference. Really does. And it helps out so we're good. Rick Outzen: Eric, thank you for all you did. All your team did. Yeah there. We're gonna go ahead and take a break. Gosh, it just if you have any information you need to know anything about recovery, what's going on, check with the city and the county, their websites, or the blog. We'll do the best to help you. We'll take a break, we'll be right back.