TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday that his state must prepare for Hurricane Helene, which is barreling toward a northern runway in the Gulf of Mexico and is on the verge of becoming a major hurricane before it hits the state on Thursday.
DeSantis said at a news conference in Tampa that Helene is on a path that could allow it to rapidly intensify before making landfall somewhere in the Big Bend, with the state capital expected to be directly in the path. The latest weather models, which normally show a variety of possible paths for a storm, all predicted a similar catastrophic path, DeSantis said.
“There is clearly a path for this to intensify rapidly before it makes landfall,” DeSantis said during the news conference, which was held at a utility staging area set up for the storm. “This is a very large storm and you’re going to have impacts that are well outside of what a spaghetti model would have,” he added, referring to a type of model that shows several possible paths.
DeSantis said residents should be prepared for power outages and know their evacuation zones. But he said he still refused to scare people into evacuating in the state, despite the potential for a historic disaster. He said there’s still a chance Helene could shift east and become a weaker storm, and he would rather just provide information to residents and let county emergency managers make the decisions.
“I don’t believe in scaring everybody and saying the only thing that can happen is the worst case,” DeSantis said. “We said there’s a spectrum of possibilities for this storm.”
Helene was 500 miles southwest of Tampa Wednesday afternoon in an area of the Gulf near the Yucatan Peninsula. National Weather Service forecasters had determined by Wednesday morning that the storm had intensified into a dangerous, fast-moving hurricane.
They predicted that Big Bend would produce a storm surge of at least 3 meters along the coast and that strong winds would also blow inland.
“Due to Helene’s expected high speed, damaging and life-threatening wind gusts are expected to extend far inland across portions of the southeastern United States,” the meteorologists wrote.
The storm is expected to be powerful enough to cause damage across most of the state.
“It’s a very big storm and it’s going to have a lot of impact,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis declared a state of emergency for 61 counties on Monday, while local officials began issuing mandatory evacuations along the Gulf Coast. Just south of Tallahassee, Franklin, Taylor and Wakulla counties issued mandatory evacuations for all residents on Wednesday. Mandatory evacuations remained in effect along the coast, including parts of Charlotte, Manatee and Pinellas counties.
At least 12 nursing homes and hospitals have already been evacuated in anticipation of the storm. More could be evacuated as meteorologists have carefully mapped Helene’s path.
The Florida Division of Emergency Management began preparing for Helene over the weekend, with more than 18,000 linemen positioned around areas predicted to receive direct impact. DEM has also assembled rescue crews, flood vehicles, boats and helicopters that can be deployed after the storm passes.
The city of Tallahassee has already warned residents to prepare for a “direct attack,” with state government offices closed Wednesday in preparation.
Florida has already applied for a pre-landfall declaration from FEMA, but the federal agency has so far only given partial approval. DEM Director Kevin Guthrie said FEMA has only agreed to cover some of the storm’s costs, but not the most expensive by far for security efforts and debris cleanup after landfall.
FEMA could still approve those expenses before the storm or after it makes landfall.
Helene is expected to impact some of the most financially strapped counties in the state. Guthrie said some places have already begun gathering pre-landfall supplies, such as off-duty police officers, with the expectation that FEMA will help pay for them as requested by the state. Guthrie said federal officials in Washington are unaware that Helene poses a threat to a part of Florida that is covered in a thick canopy of trees with heavy branches. In fact, Tallahassee is known for its tree-covered roads.
“Where we live, where the rubber meets the road, counties are making decisions based on what’s in the declaration that the governor and I put forward,” Guthrie said. “We think this is the best path forward.”
