PBS News Hour

AMNA NAWAZ: Welcome to the "NewsHour."

Hurricane Idalia has weakened to a tropical storm tonight hours after it blasted north Florida with winds near 125 miles an hour and a wall of water that caused heavy flooding.

GEOFF BENNETT: Officials reported two rain-related traffic deaths.

Thousands of people chose to get out of harm's way while others hunkered down for the first major storm to hit the state this year.

After a night of raging wind and rain, Hurricane Idalia landed early today on Florida's Gulf Coast.

Those who sheltered in place woke up to find flooded streets.

BILL HALL, Tampa Resident: The flooding is unbelievable.

I'm not going to be able to go to work, I don't think, for a couple of days.

And this is going to be devastating, I think, for at least a couple of days.

GEOFF BENNETT: The hurricane could be seen from the International Space Station.

The storm hit hardest and the Big Bend region where the Florida Panhandle curves into the peninsula.

After the hurricane had passed, officials urged people to remain watchful for surging water and rising tides.

Local utility companies staged crews and trucks in anticipation of outages.

As of midday, when the eye of the hurricane moved out of Florida, hundreds of thousands of people were without power.

GOV.

RON DESANTIS (R-FL), Presidential Candidate: The state is still being impacted by the storms bands, and we're seeing that particularly in the northern part of the state.

Utility workers are actively working to restore power in all affected areas.

GEOFF BENNETT: As Idalia moved inland, the storm was on track to cross Georgia and head into the Carolinas before moving back out to the Atlantic Ocean.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said he expected the storm to move quickly through the state.

But he cautioned people not to let their guards down.

GOV.

BRIAN KEMP (R-GA): It's a dangerous storm.

People need to prepare.

They need to be ready when it's coming through and either move a county or two up, if they have the ability to do that, if not, make sure they're in a secure location.

GEOFF BENNETT: Up to 120,000 people in Georgia had already lost power by the afternoon.

Back in Florida, images from the storm's aftermath included this one of a downed tree at the governor's mansion in Tallahassee.

President Biden today spoke about the storm's impact.

JOE BIDEN, President of the United States: Federal teams on the ground are going to continue to work with the first responders in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina to get people to safety.

I let each governor I spoke with know, if there's anything, anything the states need right now, I'm ready to mobilize that support of what they need.

GEOFF BENNETT: All of this in a state still recovering from last year's Hurricane Ian that destroyed thousands of buildings and killed nearly 150 people.

For an update now from an official on the ground, we turn to the mayor of Tallahassee, John Dailey.

Mayor Dailey, thank you for being with this.

This was the largest, strongest storm to ever hit the Big Bend area in modern history.

Tallahassee is, of course, the region's biggest city.

How has your city fared?

JOHN DAILEY (D), Mayor of Tallahassee, Florida: Well, to be honest with you, we got lucky.

We started off this morning at about 6: 30 at the emergency operations enter, looking at a potential Cat 3 hurricane making landfall and coming straight to Tallahassee.

But, as we now know, when it hit landfall, it actually went due east, we were impacted, and we do have damage.

But it could have been much worse for the Tallahassee area.

But you are correct that this is the strongest storm, I believe, in history that has hit the Big Bend area.

And I know a lot of my colleagues and mayors of other communities up and down the Gulf Coast are in a massive rebuilding, recovery stage as well.

GEOFF BENNETT: In our report, we saw that 100-year-old oak tree that split in half in front of the governor's mansion, and part of which fell on the mansion.

Do you have an idea of the extent of the damage across your city right now?

JOHN DAILEY: We do.

We have a lot of trees down.

One thing about Tallahassee is that we are a Tree City USA; 55 percent of our city is actually under a tree canopy.

So, our concerns, obviously are, when you have high winds and trees and power lines, they do not mix very well.

So, as a result between the sustained winds that we did impact here in Tallahassee, we did have a lot of trees down, a lot of trees that fell on power lines.

They're blocking roads.

We're out in the process right now.

And, unfortunately, the massive oak on the grounds of the governor's mansion fell down today.

And we're sorry to see that happen.

But we're glad that no one was hurt when it did come down.

GEOFF BENNETT: This part of Florida, as we mentioned, isn't really accustomed to storms of this size and magnitude.

How was your city able to prepare for it?

JOHN DAILEY: Well, we laughed and say we had backup plans to the backup plans to the plan itself.

And we started early.

And I will give you some examples.

Number one, communication is key.

And we began communicating with our community.

Let me remind you, we have a municipal population of 200,000, another 100,000 in the county with a student population of 70,000.

So it's very important for us to communicate, and let everyone know that we have a significant storm event coming and be prepared.

As a result, we didn't have the long lines at the gas pump or in the grocery store.

People took care of business, but we did it an orderly fashion.

As an institution, we are the largest municipal service provider in the region.

We were out checking over 4,000 miles of transmission and just distribution, electric lines to make sure that they were clear, checking our sewer system, our stormwater system, our water systems.

And as a result of that activity up front, I think that our stormwater and our water systems, they all worked very well.

But we also ramped up our manpower.

We tripled the size of our electric utility department by reaching out for our mutual aid agreements as far away as Nebraska, Oklahoma, Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana, and we had other municipalities that sent their crews to Tallahassee.

Prior to the storm, we stationed our assets all across the community.

And so, as the storm moved through our community, we were ready to respond, went straight out, had our emergency response to the first assessment.

And here we are.

GEOFF BENNETT: Do you expect that these kinds of weather events will become more common?

And how are you planning for it, if so?

JOHN DAILEY: So we are used to having these type of weather events, not necessarily a direct hit, but we usually are impacted one way or the other in the Tallahassee community by a tropical storm event, say.

Most of the time, they go to the west of us actually, not the east of us.

That's what made this one a little bit more unique.

I think what is concerning is, when we look at the size and the strength of the storm events as they're coming through now, we're seeing a lot more intensity even in our summertime rainstorms that take place, let alone these massive storm events.

So it does cause pause and make you think about the environment and global warming and what it's doing to all of our communities.

So, we are impacted, usually, maybe on an annual basis or every other year from some type of a massive storm event or tropical storm event.

GEOFF BENNETT: John Dailey is the mayor of Tallahassee.

Mr. Mayor, I'm glad to hear your city escaped the worst of Idalia.

Thanks for being with us.

JOHN DAILEY: Thank you.