Lessons learned: Hurricane Michael battered storm-tested Tallahassee and left her in the dark

James Call
Tallahassee Democrat

Hurricane Michael convinced Mary Floyd and her husband to move.

The couple lived on San Luis Ridge when the catastrophic storm brewed in the Gulf and its steering winds directed it toward a North Florida landfall. The previous two years they had weathered hurricanes Irma and Hermine and considered themselves storm veterans who were well prepared for Michael’s arrival.

So, they hunkered in their home across from the San Luis Mission historic site for the 12 hours Michael battered Tallahassee with tropical storm winds and gusts of up to 71 miles per hour.

Floyd would not do that again.

“We thought we knew the process of going through a hurricane, but if we have another one like Michael, we would probably pack up and go,” said Floyd, an education specialist with Big Bend Early Learning Coalition.

“I think everyone was shocked at how close Michael came to be a big threat to Tallahassee,” said Floyd.

Tallahassee's near miss

Hurricane Michael was the most powerful storm to have blown across the Panhandle. Its eastern edge attacked Tallahassee from the west and plunged parts of the city into darkness for a week. 

As its tentacles passed over Leon County more than half of the county’s electrical transmission lines were knocked out of service and 97 percent of residents were left without power.

More:Skeletal canopy, blasted out windows downtown: What if Hurricane Michael had hit Tallahassee?

Downed trees were everywhere – nearly a million cubic yards worth, according to a Leon County staff report. Tree trunks became entangled in power lines. Branches were hurled like spears into substations and knocked 30 percent of them out of service, according to the city. And more than a thousand road segments were blocked with tree debris, which hampered efforts to restore power.

When the sky cleared, about a thousand linemen from throughout the state, the South and the Midwest descended on the county and region to begin restoration efforts. Power was restored to nearly 90 percent of residents within four days. And by the end of the seventh day, Tallahassee City Utilities announced nearly 100 percent restoration – while a few scattered outages remained elsewhere in the county.

The Floyds, and a neighbor, have the distinction of being one of the final customers after both Hurricanes Hermine (2016) and Michael (2018) to have their electricity restored. They lived on the end of the street and are the neighborhood’s only two homes to share one of the 122 circuits Michael damaged.

Marking the Michael milestone:

“That was the hardest part – seeing people right around you all getting electricity. Seeing your friends’ Facebook postings about their power returning and here we are … we thought were kind of forgotten about,” said Floyd. “We called the city every day. We were pretty sure they were aware, but we still did it.”

Biggest casualty: No electricity

Utility workers have a priority list for restoration, according to Rob McGarrah, Manager of the City of Tallahassee Electric and Gas Utility. Hospitals have the highest priority and are at the top of the list. Then comes service connected to public safety entities, followed by schools.

“After that it becomes a numbers game – where can we send folks to get the most customers back the quickest,” explained McGarrah. “If you happen to be one of those groups of customers that one, two or eight people on a circuit that’s out, then they are going to be towards the tail end of the restoration.”

The Floyds figured that out.

After two consecutive hurricane seasons where they lived with cold showers for a week and rearranged schedules to get home in time to do some house cleaning and make dinner before it became dark, the Floyds moved across town.

They re-settled in a northeast Tallahassee neighborhood on the same circuit as a hospital.

“Maybe that will help,” said Floyd. “As a child I remember losing power for a few hours, but it seems like now the idea of losing power for more than a few hours has increased. I am more aware of what getting through a hurricane means and what can happen.”

Lessons learned

After three storms in three consecutive years, Tallahassee and Leon County officials say they are as well prepared for a storm as any community can be.

“We are battle-tested. We hadn’t been tested like we were in Hermine since 1985,” said Leon County Commissioner Kristen Dozier, discussing the community’s response to Michael over a cup of coffee at the Lucky Goat.

The 2016 storm is most remembered for confused response – “a train wreck,” is how County Commissioner Bryan Desloge described it, and the political jousting of former Gov. Rick Scott and former Mayor Andrew Gillum over the delays in restoring electrical power. Both politicians at the time were planning 2018 campaigns.

Complaints from the public about the flow of information forced the county, which is responsible for the coordination of an emergency response, to change how it prepares for a major storm and manages its aftermath.

“I hate to say it, but we had become complacent. We had gone 30 years without a storm and suddenly it became real,” said Desloge.

Before Hermine, the county had decentralized emergency response – assigning the responsibility to the sheriff. The city, meanwhile, had set up its own emergency response department.

Hermine exposed the weakness in the arrangement – Hermine’s wind and damage paled in comparison to Michael’s but the amount of time it took to restore power and residents’ complaints far exceeded the latter storm’s.

The county put the Emergency Operation Center at the forefront of storm preparation and response and empowered its director of emergency operations to coordinate the efforts of more than 50 city, county and state agencies activated when an emergency is declared.

“You have to have a chain of command, a good process and coordinated effort to be able to respond without confusion," said Dozier, who explained the biggest complaint residents had after Hermine was that no one seemed to know who was responsible for what.  

County staff did a deep dive into an hour-by-hour analysis of what had happened when Hermine hit. They repeated the exercise after Irma. By the time Michael arrived they had made, and the Commission adopted, more than 80 recommendations for a better response to a storm emergency.

The plan includes the pre-deployment of equipment and other resources around the community for a quicker response once the storm passes. The county also developed an emergency app to connect with residents and provide updates on the recovery.  It identified state and community agencies to partner with and to pool resources. And the county purchased a machine to help residents fill sand bags and relocated sand bag distribution points for convenience.  

“It was a much more coordinated and much more organized and effective response,” said Desloge about the overall effort. “For everyone to have power in a week and the majority of roads cleared in a couple of days is staggering.”

The after-action reports that began after Hermine enabled officials to quickly assemble a team of nearly 500 county staff at the county’s emergency operations center. There they begin to coordinate efforts to open and staff emergency shelters, deploy equipment for public safety and when conditions permit, begin to clear road ways.

The procedures the county has implemented has led FLASH, the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes, to certify Leon County as the nation’s first Hurricane Strong Community.

The non-profit community advocacy group promotes the county as a model of storm readiness for cities and counties.

County administrator Vince Long said the past three hurricane seasons taught him preparation is key for a successful response. But he quickly adds, his confidence in how the county will respond when the next storm arrives is leavened with the knowledge that each storm presents a different challenge.

“Sometimes its wind. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes flooding gets you. Each time you must deploy and respond differently. We know it comes down to organization,” said Long.

Hurricane Michael and Leon County by the numbers

  • $23 million – estimated damage countywide
  • 1 million – cubic yards of debris collected in Michael's wake
  • 1,500 – people who sought emergency shelter in county facilities
  • 200 – number of citizens who brought pets with them to the emergency shelter
  • 1,200 – damaged homes
  • 25 – homes destroyed
  • 1,000 – roads impassable immediately after the storm
  • 1,000 – breakfasts, lunches and dinners provided daily by Tallahassee City Utilities to electrical workers
  • 650 – mutual aid electrical line workers from 15 states who traveled to Tallahassee to help with restoration
  • 530 – number of county staff reassigned to storm response during the emergency
  • 194 – continuous hours of full activation of the Emergency Operations Center
  • 122 – of 165 electrical circuits damaged and knocked off line
  • 100 – tree trimmers who cleared transmission lines for electrical workers
  • 97 – percent of residents without electrical power after the storm
  • 92 – of 105 pump stations knocked offline
  • 71 – mph peak wind gusts in Leon County
  • 58 – city, county, state agency representatives at the EOC from Oct. 8 to Oct. 13
  • 12 – hours Leon battered by tropical storm-force winds

MARKING THE MILESTONE

Continuing through the month, we will revisit some of the hardest hit communities and have daily datelined stories from more than a dozen towns in North Florida and South Georgia.

How to Help

Donate or volunteer at rebuild850.org or learn ways to Give, Go and Serve at www.onenorthflorida.org/

Explore the trajectory of tragedy

Visit michael.tallahassee.com to take a virtual tour of Hurricane Michael’s destruction from the coast to the Georgia state line as seen through the eyes, stories, photos and videos of our journalists and neighbors.

Help us write the next chapter

The Tallahassee Democrat has won a $25,000 Facebook grant to continue chronicling the recovery after Hurricane Michael.  We will pay community correspondents – writers, photographers and videographers – who live in the hardest-hit areas to help tell the stories of the storm's aftermath and recovery. To apply, email us at letters@tallahassee.com

Writer James Call can be contacted at jcall@tallahassee.com. Follow on Twitter @CallTallahassee