Latest / Rick Outzen: (we don’t) color on the dog / Milton After Isaias
Transcript
- Rick Outzen: Welcome back. I'm Rick Outson. This is Rick's Blog Live. We had a hurricane just a week or so ago, and it is the damage is is uneven around the community. One area that got particularly hit hard was the city of Milton, and we've got city manager Ed Spears. Ed, thank you for coming. So Milton City Manager Ed Spears: Thanks for having me, Rick. Rick Outzen: where does Milton stand today, a week after the storm? Milton City Manager Ed Spears: So we are still under our emergency declaration right now. we've assessed the entire city. About sixty percent of all structures within the city limits, about six square miles. sixty percent of our structures sustain some type of damage. About five percent of those are gonna be uninhabitable when we get to the finish line here. but you and I both experienced Hurricane Ivan together. It's very reminiscent of that. As you drive around, there's not a single Property that doesn't have something that you see, a tree down, a fence down, a sign that's torn up, or damage to the structure itself. Rick Outzen: It it it it was an unusual storm. It was it was different in a lot of ways. I've I've we're gonna have Eric Gilmore on a little bit later in the show, but it was a different kind of storm and in a lot of ways Milton got hit harder than than Gulf Breeze or or the the coast. Milton City Manager Ed Spears: Absolutely. And and you don't expect that being inland, right? About twenty miles from the coast and being on the west side of the storm. Right. Right. That that's not how these hurricanes typically behave. And if you look at all the destruction, all the damage in the city of Milton, everything's facing south to southwest. It's when it turned the corner and came back at us. And you know, I don't know a sting jet from right. That's a whole turf. I know I've never heard of it. So I I you know. It's a lot of tornado damage. If you ask my uneducated right opinion of it, just the the the swaths, the the tracks that we see of damage, and then you look over and there's trees over here and trees over there that weren't damaged, and there's clear paths that you can see of the the devastation, but it is absolutely everywhere. Rick Outzen: Do you have an early estimate on w on the s on the let's say the public sector damage? Milton City Manager Ed Spears: we do. we're looking at about thirty, thirty-five million dollars in the city. Well that that's twenty-five million of that is the debris collection. Right, right. which we began Tuesday last week. We were one of the first communities to start debris collection. This morning we eclipsed a hundred thousand cubic yards of vegetative debris that we have collected to date. And that's one fourth of the estimate. Our estimate is in our six square miles, there is some four hundred thousand cubic yards of of vegetative debris. About thirty five thousand cubic yards of construction debris, stuff that's blown off of structures in the city. So we're collecting that as as quickly and safely as we can. and that's a message I clearly want to to state to the public. Please, please be very careful around the b debris piles, the debris collection equipment. It's dangerous outbreak right now. Right. Rick Outzen: What about the private sector? Have you seen what kind of estimates you've seen on on on private property? Milton City Manager Ed Spears: properties. the the county wide assessment where you could go a property appraiser put that number in, it was over two hundred and fifty million dollars. I think it's gonna be more concentrated in the city of Milton because simply it's it's every building. There's something to it. The the roofs peeled back, facades that are laying on the ground. Rick Outzen: Right. The photos and we we're sharing with the with the viewers. The the photos are horrific. this was your first time to go through as a city manager. how was that? Milton City Manager Ed Spears: that. I I've been in local government for thirty years and it it's been an honor to s to serve the various communities that I have served. But this is the first time in the in the number one chair. Right. And you know my wife, basketball coach, she tells you even though they're side by side, they're miles apart, chair one to chair two. Right. it's miles apart from my other positions. I I tell you the thing you hope as a leader that your team's prepared and that they're gonna execute when it comes time. And I've just been astounded by the City of Milton team and what they've been able to accomplish in in the number of days that that we've put the city back together and and what where we are now compared to what we woke up to on October tenth. It's amazing. Rick Outzen: You and it really it it it tests an organization like nothing else does when you go through this. It with Gulf Breeze we had Ivan, we had Dennis, we had parts of Katrina when I was on the city council in Gulf Breeze and it tests you in a lot of different ways. You know, you look at this and y pretty much you were ground zero. how is how is the water and the power and and the other utilities, how are they doing it in Milton? Milton City Manager Ed Spears: there's still some structures that we simply can't get power to because the electric service to that that structure has been ripped apart. Right. And until a licensed electrician can get there and and repair that building, we can't turn the power back on. But the water system is complete and functioning. We passed our water test I think it was Thursday after the storm. so everything is is back to potable water now. Our gas utility is back up and running. but that's another thing you you think, well the gas is underground. Well, the trees are ripping everything out. Right. and then when everyone turns on their generator at one time, you know, you'll expect that kind of demand. Right. And and that pulls the pressure down immensely. But working with our community partners with Florida Power and Light, you know, they were they were there when the sun came up that morning with our teams out on the street assessing damage, clearing the road, and you know, our team really executed the plan and that's part of it as well as knowing your role and staying in your lane. My role was in the EOC in City Hall. And so when people would say, Have you seen the No, I haven't. I have to get those reports from the field and rely on the experts who are out there to to direct the the EOC activities. And so you're you're sitting kind of in this cave, you know it's bad, can see what you can see outside the windows, but the full extent of it you just don't realize and but you're getting those reports back from your team in the field. Yeah. Rick Outzen: When you when you look at and we there was a rush on the state's part to try to get Santa Rosa kids back into the schools. I've heard the schools in Milton took took it pretty bad. What what what's your y'all's Milton City Manager Ed Spears: And the the aerials that we've seen of Milton High School, the gym is totally destroyed and unusable. There are some other areas of of that school that were damaged. we have five schools in the city limit between elementary, middle, and the high school itself. it wasn't up to us to determine when. Right. We just had to assist so that it could be open. And we focused last Thursday and Friday on clearing the perimeters of the school, the the rights of way around the schools to be free of debris and then over the weekend we had our debris hauler clear every bus stop, about a hundred and ten bus stops in the city limits. Now a lot of neighbors got mad. They're like they were in my neighborhood, they picked up this corner and then they left. That's the bus stop. we're coming back, I promise you there's about three debris passes that are gonna take place in the city of Milton. We haven't forgotten anybody we're gonna get there, but we started those big streets and then we worked Rick Outzen: Hidden kids needed to safely get into a school that was safe and a safe path to it. Ed, thank you so much for coming on. Always. We're still recovering. And we we're gonna have Eric Gilmore on just a few minutes, public safety director for Escambia County. It's good to have Ed here. We'll take a break. We'll be right back. Mm.