JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Leaders from the Florida Division of Emergency Management have set multiple goals for this week as Southwest Florida recovers from Hurricane Ian.
FDEM Director Kevin Guthrie holds a press conference of division leaders to share the ongoing efforts they are making this week to restore basic necessities to residents impacted by the storms last week.
Guthrie says that homes, which did not suffer much catastrophic damage, will be able to get their water and electricity restored by the end of the week.
“I want 75 percent of the individuals that can receive water restored in five days, 100 percent of those that can receive water returned by Sunday, which happens to be the same day that electrical individuals say that will have most of the restoration done to homes that can receive that,” says Guthrie.
The Chief Information Officer of FDEM, Jamie Grant details how Internet services, a modern-day necessity, will be restored for both residents, families, and command units in the wake of the hurricane.
“We are deploying network access as traditional cell and Internet carriers try and get things restored on the ground,” Grant says. “We, as of 5 a.m. this morning, have 372 commercial, high-priority Starlink Units, in theater, being deployed as we speak.”
To begin with, mobile Internet cafes will allow residents to charge their devices and connect with family to let them know they are okay. And secondly, the Internet services will support mobile command units working on various efforts and inter-agency collaborations in Southwest Florida.
Urban Search and Rescue teams have checked roughly 45 thousand waypoint locations, including residences, businesses, and city buildings looking for missing people and survivors.
Guthrie says, “We’ve been to just about every address at least once and now the CFO’s office, with his teams are going back doing a second look at every single location.”
Those locations include the more than 20 thousand households that marked themselves as sheltering-in-place on day one, when Hurricane Ian hit areas like Leeds County, one of the most devastated areas.
FDEM has set up two important websites for residents displaced during the storm.
You can go to both sites to help rescue teams locate you or your loved ones -
To mark that you are safe, please register by clicking here
If you want to donate or volunteer to help Southwest Floridians, please visit Volunteer Florida.