Hurricane Debby made landfall as a Category 1 storm in Florida early Monday.
With wind gusts at 80 miles per hour, Debby hit near the northern Florida community of Steinhatchee, situated off the Gulf Coast.
Catastrophic flooding is expected across the Southeast from Florida’s Big Bend, to Savannah, Georgia, to Charleston, South Carolina. Residents are bracing for as much as 30 inches of rain and a life-threatening storm surge.
Seven Florida counties are under mandatory evacuation orders. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp have both issued states of emergency.
At a press conference Monday morning, DeSantis urged residents to remain safe inside and off roadways.
The governor said the Florida Department of Transportation has been clearing roads and shoulders for the last few days. Cut and toss efforts to clear roadways will begin as soon as the storm passes.
“I want to thank everybody who's been involved in the preparation efforts. We've got a lot work ahead of us,” DeSantis said. There's going to be a lot of water that’s going to be dumped throughout the state and we're going to see effects of that, not just today, but in the ensuing days. But we are prepared, we have the resources that we need, and those will be deployed as needed to help with the recovery and the response efforts.”
DeSantis said the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in St. Petersburg and the Howard Frankland Bridge in Tampa are temporarily closed due to high winds and will reopen as soon as possible.
The governor said the state has 11 million water bottles and almost 3 million shelf-stable meals for residents as needed, but he doesn’t anticipate putting a major dent in that stash with this storm.
Over 300,000 were without power in Florida as of 9:30 a.m. Monday, according to PowerOutage.us.
Nearly 17,000 linemen have been working to restore power, the governor said.
DeSantis issued a word of caution to residents wanting to use their power generators.
“Although we haven't had major power outages compared to some of the past storms, if you are without power and you want to use a generator, please do not use the generator inside your home,” DeSantis said.
“Make sure you're operating [your generator] at least 20 feet away from the home. We don't want to see anybody get killed based on the carbon monoxide that will build up when those are run inside people's homes,” he said.
