MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Hurricane Milton made landfall on Florida's Gulf Coast last night. This all comes as people are still trying to recover from Hurricane Helene, which made landfall less than two weeks ago, and some still haven't fully recovered from Hurricane Ian in 2022.
ALLYSON RAE: We're apprehensive. We have anxiety as a community of going through that level of destruction and catastrophic damage that we dealt with with Ian. We just don't want to do it again.
MARTIN: That's Allyson Rae, the chief meteorologist at the NBC2 station in Fort Myers.
RAE: These are scary storms. These are big, major hurricanes. Things are going to happen. And unfortunately, it hurts to say that.
MARTIN: Todd Dunn is a public information officer with the Emergency Management Department of Charlotte County on the Gulf Coast of Florida, and he's here now to tell us what's going on there. Good morning.
TODD DUNN: Good morning.
MARTIN: Mr. Dunn, you were telling me that you're about 80 miles south of Tampa. That's also where Hurricane Ian made landfall two years ago, which was...
DUNN: Yep.
MARTIN: ...Devastating, as we've just heard. So what's happening in the county right now? What does it look like?
DUNN: Well, so our crews were off the streets during the tropical-force winds. That was the threshold to bring them off. So once those winds subsided, we resumed emergency services, and they're going out, assessing the damage. We have a - our water rescue team staging, and they're preparing to, at first light, start going out there and seeing if they need to have water rescues.
MARTIN: Do you think you have what you need? Are there things that you need to support the efforts there that you don't have? Like, how is it going? - I guess is my question.
DUNN: Earlier this year, we did a tabletop activation where we were - and the scenario was exactly what we experienced. Recovering from a major storm, only to have another one come, was the exercise, and we just lived that out. So we had state resources ready to go. I feel like we were as prepared as you can be for something like this.
MARTIN: What is it like, dealing with back-to-back storms like that - both, you know, logistically and, if...
DUNN: Yeah.
MARTIN: ...You don't mind my asking, like, psychologically?
DUNN: You know, it takes its toll. You know, when you talk about - not only are my coworkers, who have been working around the clock - many of them now haven't had time off. And of course, you know, that's the job we signed up for, so there's not complaints. But also, you know, we have to be mindful of mental health and make sure, you know, we're watching out for each other and, you know, make sure we're all healthy physically and mentally.
MARTIN: And how do you do that? I mean, it's hard to sleep. I'm assuming that most of you evacuated your own families - right? - because there was a...
DUNN: Yeah.
MARTIN: ...Mandatory evacuation order. How do you take care of yourself, if you don't mind my asking?
DUNN: Personally, for me, my family was able to evacuate. We had friends who had a place over in Hollywood. So that was one less thing that I, you know, was worrying about. Of course, where I live, our house was in the evacuation zone, so we sandbagged and lifted everything up, expecting - I, you know, left the house. We put all of our sentimental objects up high and left the house, expecting it to be flooded. Thankfully, I've heard from my sister that we did not have any of that flooding, so we'll just move on and recover together.
MARTIN: Well, I'm going to keep a good thought for you, for your family, for your neighbors, for the whole county and for the whole state and everybody who's dealing with this. That's Todd Dunn. He's with the Emergency Management Department of Charlotte County. That's in southwest Florida. Todd Dunn, thank you so much for talking with us. And like I said, I'm going to keep a good thought.
DUNN: I appreciate it. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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