something that might never happen and that can really, really hinder the kind of research that's going on. but i would love to see more-- and within the scientific community, there's not agreement right now for some of these tools and techniques that are coming around so it can be really difficult to create regulatory environment when the scientists themselves aren't in agreement on the approach and what should be allowed. >> so, trisha points to the challenge of preparing for a low probability event, but that could have very high consequences. and so, finding those dual use opportunities to explore the great power of biotechnology and hedge against the low probability, aalbeit-- >> we'll leave this to go live with governor ron desantis for those affected by hurricane ian. >> and deanne criswell, we

appreciate her coming down and fema's responsiveness to this and thank you very much and thank you for being here. you had people immediately descend onto the scene particularly in southwest florida. there's light rescue, making sure that people are okay, following up on any type of calls, and there's been really a herculean effort and there's also the assessment, okay, what's been damaged that's going to impact the entire community and the power is an issue. there are people working, i think that lee and charlotte have about 15% restored and there's more to be restored likely in the relatively near future and some that's going to require some rebuild, so the utilities, fp and l is down there and they're prepared to do that. the other, lee county has asked for support from. they had a water main break for their county water reutility,

that mean the county does not have water at this point and you need that to be able to function in society. they've requested support from fema and then we, fema was able to provide the army corps of engineers and they were on the ground after kevin called them i think at like 3:00 in the morning, and they were on the ground in southwest florida until yesterday in the afternoon and they've been work to go assess that situation and we also have florida national guard to help the army corps of engineers if they need it and that will be something to be very, very critical to be able to get that back and it may require more of a rebuild. maybe it will require more short-term remediation and that's clearly a top priority and we're thankful that fema pan the army corps are there helping out. we have, obviously, there is a lot of folks in affected areas

that evacuated. some did shelter in place as of last night. we've contacted over 20,000 floridians that filled out a shelter in place survey on florida disaster.org and over 10,000 have responded and all 10,000 say they were safe and sent the first alert last night and are expecting more responses this morning. cell phone connectivity, sometimes it's easier to get out a text message, so, the process has been streamlined. there's now a stand alone site to report your location, so if you're having issues contacting your family via phone, and if you're sheltering and want them to know that you're safe. there's website, missing.fl.gov. these forms are triaged by staff here in tallahassee and dispatched to responders that are on the ground and in

addition to the rescues yesterday, rescue personnel has gone to more than 3,000 homes in the hardest hit areas, going door-to-door to check on the occupants of those residences. there are over a 1,000 dedicated rescue personnel going up and down the coastline and they're going to be doing more and more inland and some of our counties, inland portions of charlotte and lee, but also, desoto and hardy county. i think that hardy county is the most without power and i think they're 99% without or pretty-- >> yes. >> so you see the really troubling images of just a washed out home on the fort myers beach and that's ground zero and obviously very important, but this was such a big storm that there are effects far inland and these rescue personnel are sensitive to that and they're going to be helping. we've opened two major points of distribution for food and water this morning. first, charlotte sports park,

the spring training facility for the tampa bay rays and then the league county sports for the minnesota twins, these are pods that are much bigger than normal pods. there have been over 1.6 million gallons of fuel into southwest florida have moved in to support the response. what we're finding with the fuel, the fuel supply is flowing, it's just a matter of the gas stations need to have power to be able to operate and if they have a certain number of pumps they're required to have a generator and i was in lee county and saw some of the larger gas stations were operating. >> and that's a good sign. there are 1.9 million without power, hardy 99% without power as of this morning, charlotte and lee, both have 85% without and desoto at 80% without. sarasota, collier, manatee,

close to half of the customers there are without power. hillsboro and pinellas, 15 to 18% are without power and these crews have been on the ground since it was safe to do so and they're working 24/7 throughout the state of florida and that's over 42,000 linemen and paerm people on the ground. they've cleared 1100 miles of roadway. i was happy to see the traffic flowing in southwest florida. obviously there are structural problems with some of the bridges leading out to sanibel and pine island, but by and large, they were tossed and clear operations, and the traffic is flowing in southwest florida, probably better than would have been anticipated so soon after such a major hurricane, so we appreciate that. they've also inspected and reopened 800 bridges across the

state and this includes 67 high priority bridges inspected and reopened in lee, charlotte, sarasota and manatee counties. pine island, sanibel, those are going to be rebuilt efforts. the sanibel bridge had breaks in multiple parts of it. it was not where the water and the pylons were, those held up well. it was where you had it on the sand bar and that was basically washed out from underneath. in the meantime, and kevin can talk about this, they're going to be running barges to be able to bring more heavy equipment on the island to be able to help with the response. the first responders that have been there by and large coming in via air, they do have some equipment, but they're travelling lighter to go and get to people quickly as possible. there have been six health care facilities evacuated, southwest florida, they were not-- they were having problems with water or problems with power

for an extended period of time. we're also prioritizing getting water and running potable water to the rest of the areas health care facilities. 117 facilities that had lost power that now have power restored. the ports, tampa bay, miami, everglades. they are reopened for fueling and i think that between today and tomorrow all the ports in the state of florida up and down both coasts will be operational. food and water, massive amounts, and we're-- where kevin is sensitive to the water situation and we, i'd say this is in an extraordinary amount of water that's been staged and is continuing to be brought into the area. so fema has activated their individual assistance program, so if your need of help of recovering in those affected counties, you can go to disaster assistance.gov or call 1-800-621-3362.

800-621-6632, and 40,000 people have registered with fema and make sure if you're looking at claims on your property, document that and take photos and we want you to be able to be made whole as quickly as possible. there will be in conjunction with fema, the state of florida and the local communities, what are called disaster recovery centers, those will be set up very soon and that will be a place if you need help with things like individual assistance, you can go, although, you know, you don't need to go there, you can do this online, and there's also going to be insurance villages set up under the leadership of cfo, jimmy patrons, you're going to have flood insurance claims as a result of this, you'll have wind claims as a result of this and it's our view that these claims need to be paid quickly so that people can get back on their feet. i want to thank the first lady

for spearheading our efforts for volunteer florida and activate the florida disaster fund where people can donate. if you want to contribute you'll be joining a lot of people who have done a lot of money and we now have over $12 hl with 24 to 36 hours after the storm hit, pretty incredible that that's happened. if you want to do, go to florida disaster fund.org, florida disaster fund.org. more than 12 million has come in and there's a lot of interest to do a lot more. why is that important? you know, fema has certain things they can do, via statute regulation and if it falls outside of that, they can't do it. that's not the way it works, so, when you enlist private organizations and they can be a little more nimble and they can tailor their response to some of the more unique needs that citizens have. and you have people that have been dislocated. you have people that no longer have homes, and so there's

going to be a wide variety of things that they're going to need in the doming days, weeks, and months. volunteer florida, if you want to volunteer your time, visit www.volunteer florida.org to find volunteer opportunities. i think this is one way to make an impact and i know that people can appreciate the outpouring of support. i want to commend the folks that we were able to meet with down in southwest florida, this has been a major event of course, and these people have been working around the clock to serve their constituents and communities and we appreciate the dedication, we appreciate the perseverance and we know there's a lot of difficult days ahead, but they've done a great job standing up for the people of their community. i'm going to let kevin give a brief on the state response and then we'll have the fema administrator coming up and provide some perspective from fema. >> thank you, gentlemen. >> so, i'll -- obviously,

thanking the governor, but i want to thank the agencies represented here to my left, especially fema administration captain rooney and mcpherson from the united states coast guard, others that are not here that are certainly on the floor behind me, lt. colonel miller out of jacksonville, and colonel booth out of jacksonville. and colonel-- or captain if you could grab that easel and put it up. i want to thank them before i cover them up with a sign just a second. we're in the 72 hour area of search, security, stabilize that i talked about yesterday. everything i want to talk about right now is there that search, secure and stabilize. so, we continue to have our fire rescue partners, search and rescue going in there and conducting what we call the

hasty search and then they're coming back and doing the primary search and then a secondary search. it's important for everybody to know, as a part of the search and rescue element. there are three searches that are conducted that hasty search is quick, see if they see any survivors that are alive or in a traumatic situation and start to move the individuals to safety. that's conducted. now back in the primary search area, which is now we're doing a little more detailed search and a second search behind that. stay safe, i want people to make sure that they are safe. this comes down to personal preparedness, i shouldn't say personal preparedness, but the personal response. generator safety. we have been talking about it, talking about it, talking about it, but we still get reports of people, operating generators inside after garage. operator generates outside of a cracked window with the cord out of the window and we're

having continued issues with carbon monoxide. i'm not saying we have carbon monoxide death, but still having carbon monoxide issues. please operate in a safe mode. that includes not having electrical cords run through puddles of water. make sure they're elevated not running through puddles of water. next, as i mentioned last night. chain saw safety, ladder safety, wire safety. if you don't know what it is, don't cut it. if you don't know how to cut it. don't cut it. let the professionals come in and do that. we have more than 2,000 resource requests from our impacted local partners and more than 1700 are in process or completed. there's a very important bullet to note here. a lot of counties put in mission requests for both food and water when we had a 45, 50 county disaster. now we have counties starting

to cancel their food and water, so when we say 2,000, 1700, a gap. there were 2,000 mission requests and we're filling 1700, some of those are organically canceled because they're not impacted at the county level. more than 14,000 gallons of diesel for a water plant, for nearby hospitals. we've gone to fernando county for drones -- i'm sorry, for photography and video of flooded areas in desoto county. i want to make sure to take time to say thank you for the restoration crews and 5,000 individuals and get them power back, 1.9 million in the power restoration in the area that still need to be restored. thank you to our first responders.

i want to bring in -- we're getting questions about food and distribution points. i'm going to ask brian to give me this graphic that we've made here and i think this is important for a couple of reasons, we talk about a family, personal preparedness plan. so what we've done here, we're in day number two, three of the response disaster. this is where your personal family plan is being executed. this is why we've asked, we've partnered with fema on this, have three to seven days of water. you hear me talk a lot about five to seven in florida. so, again, days one through five, personal family plan, this is the food and water that you had. now, we do have food and water in shelters if you've gone to a shelter. next phase is orange, moves us from the family plan over into the national guard and local community level point of distribution plan.

that will run for somewhere between 72 hours and about 120 hours. so three to five days. so, as we exit that, again, we're way back over here, we will then come in, with mass feeding kitchens. those mass feeding kitchens will be designed to provide hot meals three times a day to the most impacted communities that still don't have food and water. and we're getting some questions the first lady is getting some questions and i want to make sure that we take the opportunity to educate individuals as a part of how everything ties together. so again, personal plan, national guard food distribution plan, which is water and dry food at our points of distribution, and then we'll move into a hot feeding kitchen plan. so, i thought it was important for everybody to understand how that connects and as we continue to get questions about that, where is your government? today, we're in the process of moving national guard to the

bulk food, that's gotten to the two locations the governor mentioned and now down to the community plan, the local national guard element that's going to set that up i'm working with lee county today, which is obviously the most impacted county. they have eight community pods opening, hopefully in some form or fashion, moving cars through them later today in eight locations. i'm going to let sandra take the lead on announcing those locations at the local level for her staff so when they're ready, we're ready, but i want to make sure to tie that together. and individuals starting to move debris to their curbside, you must, you must separate it into piles. my communications team will be giving graphics at another update today, the 5:00 or this evening update. we will tell people how to celebrate their debris into piles, if you're doing it now,

vegetation needs to be in its own pile, structural, this is food-- i'm sorry, structural is furniture, building materials, plumbing issues. that needs to be in a separate pile. then we call it household hazardous waste, these are your cleaning supplies, your batteries, your pesticides, anything that is hazardous goes into hits own pile. electronics, tv's, computers, things of that nature fw into its own pile and the last is white goods or appliances need to be in a separate pile. that's vegetation, structural, household hazardous waste, electronics and appliances. as always, when moving stuff if it's too heavy get help. these are absolutely avoidable deaths and absolutely avoidable injuries. get people to help you. we have many faith-based

community groups. we have team rubicon. individuals willing to help you to get that stuff to the roadside. so, please be safe. use gloves, use goggles, make sure you're wearing boots, look for power lines that may be mixed in the debris. thank you for allowing me to do an extended briefing and provide more detail. we'll be back this afternoon with more information, as always, governor, thank you very much for your leadership. >> okay, administrator. >> governor, new for allowing me to join you today and recognize my regional administrator, she has been on the ground since before the storm hit working side by side with director guthrey, it's not just that, our regional office works with the state of florida and all the states within the region for, throughout the year to make sure that we are planning, we are coordinated and that when we have an event like this, we can seamlessly move in to assist and support the state with their needs. what we have done, prior to landfall is we did stage a lot

of search and rescue resource toss support the great efforts that have been happening here in the state of florida. we have those resources available, as the state needs it. and we've also begun to move in, food and water into the points of distribution to support what you just heard from director guthrey. fema is here to support the ongoing life saving missions that are still ongoing, but also to begin to support the recovery mission. as you heard the governor say, the president did declare a major disaster declaration for individual assistance, as well as public assistance. public assistance is going to allow us to reimburse a lot of costs for the first responders who have been to go an amazing job. allow us to reimburse some of our overtime costs to stabilize the incident and on the individual assistance side. right now 13 counties that have been designated for individual assistance, but we will add more. as we continue to do

assessments and safe to go into the neighborhoods, we will continue to add more counties, so individuals can apply for assistance through fema. and i just want to reiterate how to do that. you can fw go to disaster assistance.gov you can call or go to our fema app. i want to let people know that we are going to have teams of individuals that are going into the shelters, to help them register for assistance, right now, we know that many people are away from their home, they may not have access to the internet, they may not have access on their cell phone, so we're going to send teams into the shelters to begin that for you. we are here to support the recovery and we know we are in the active response stage and we are going into the stabilization, but we've started planning for what the recovery is going to be because we know that this is going to be a very complicated and complex recovery, we want to make sure that we have the right resources, so i appreciate the opportunity to

join you today, so i can see firsthand what some of the needs are, i've brought recovery and response personal with me to make sure that we're bringing the right resources for bringing the governor's needs and what they are. >> any questions? >>. >> two quick ones. >> first of all, do we have an update, and secondly you're meeting with the administration today. what are you asking for? what does the state of florida need from fema? >> number one thing that we need that they provided was the army corps to support lee county and their water situation, critical, critical to get that infrastructure back and running. you look at the storm and obviously, there was significant damage, buts will have a lot 6 folks who had minimal or maybe no damage and getting them back, you know, make sure they're in their homes, they have the running water and the electrical, all of that is going to make the other efforts so much better, so we appreciate that, but i think that that is probably the number one priority, kevin, would you say that that's

probably the number one priority and you know, the army corps, they're the subject matter experts, hopefully they get a diagnosis and they can plan and then the county can go and fix it. i'll let kevin talk about the others. >> so, where we stand right now on fatalities is, i'll break this down by county. we have one confirmed fatality in polk county. we have 12 unconfirmed fatalities in charlotte county. we have eight unconfirmed fatalities in collier county. and we are still processing through the situation with the hasty search that i mentioned before in lee county. now, let me talk about confirmation and unconfirmed. people die in disasters that have nothing to do with the disaster, right, so the medical examiner is the one that makes that determination, they are the lead agency at the local

level to determine when they investigate, that this is either disaster related or not disaster related. if it's determined to be disaster related and you've heard the governor and i talk about this for three or four days, direct death, storm surge, rising water, or indirect the stuff that led to it after the fact. with that being said 12 unconfirmed fatalities in charlotte county. we have eight unconfirmed fatalities in collier, one confirmed fatality in polk county. so that brings us up to 21 total. we do have an identified situation that was done during the hasty search of some fatalities. we do not know exactly how many were in the house and let me paint the picture for you. the water was up over the

rooftop, but we had a coast guard rescue swimmer swim into it and identified and appeared to be human remains. we do not know exactly how many, we do not know what the situation is and before we comment on that, we want to be transparent, but we don't know that number and we've got a couple of other situations where we had that particular type situation. so, right now the number we're going with, we have 21, we have identified a situation for sure that we know we've got something in, but until the water recedes and we get the special equipment, again, we've got to have special equipment to get in there and the governor talked about, we can't get that over there, point of privilege and talk about that we've got 20 by 40 foot spud barge that is delivered and we can search the equipment, hackneys, sort of like beer or soda delivery trucks that have specialized equipment and get on the other side and do some

technical type rescue. once we get to that point then we can probably get you better numbers. where we're at 21, one confirmed, 20 unconfirmed. >> for clarity, there are about 20,000 people that haven't responded to the survey, 10,000 contacted and they were fine. does that mean 10,000 have not responded and they're not okay? >> that's not what that means. so, for instance, right now, we have about 14,000 people just in lee county, i believe it is, i'm sorry, across the theater, across the three counties. we've got about 14,000 people in shelters. so, we are now-- we did an automation of collecting data. we're now at a point in this 10,000, we're physically trying to find the people, do they have communications and do they have a cell phone. in the hardest impact area, we

may not have cell phone capability. it's going to take some time. if you recall from hurricane michael, we had over 30,000 and whittled down to 3,000 and then down to 300 and happened organically over time, but if you recall, between indirect and direct deaths for health care michael, we had 77. and that's going to squeeze itself down, down, down as we have the ability to get into shelters and registered in shelters and fema website, on the phone with fema, person to person with fema and then we'll start to be able to whittle the numbers down between federal data, between state data. between local data and that number will continue to shrink, but again, we are way ahead, way ahead of where we were at for hurricane michael when i was here on the floor for that. we were 30,000 weeks in that and we're less than 10,000, day number two. so that number is going to come down drastically. >> of that 10,000 number just

maybe the combination of whether they're missing, out of contact, out of power, not the location might be-- might have changed or what exactly-- how would you consider the categories? >> all the aforementioned. for those that didn't hear the question, what categories will we put those into, those without power, those without communication, those trying to still reconnect with loved ones and the end of the day it's all of those categories, but again, we will shrink that. that will organically shrink day by day. the pod that's behind me, 30 feet behind me are human services and there are people dedicated to doing nothing, but that and take the information that comes from urban search and rescue and connect to that data and whittle that list down. >> the numbers at some point in time. >> right now, so, again, missing people is a local law enforcement jurisdiction. all right, so if you want to ask questions about what are the missing person numbers,

that's got to be a local county sheriff or local county ask. >> county sheriffs, precede the transparency on casualties, do you think the message that the lee county sheriff put out was premature or makes messaging more difficult? >> i think these are stressful situations. when you have a storm like that bearing down on your community and then obviously hitting the community, you know, people who are going through that, they're working, but then you have a lump in your throat because you don't know what's going to happen. and i think that that was done because there's concern for the well-being of the people of lee county and there's a concern of the damage that the storm has done. i mean, clearly, you know, it's packed a big wallop. when you look at some of of the things, like you see a house totally washed out, nothing, but a concrete slab on fort

myers beach you pray to god that nobody was in there. in sanibel with the big houses they could hunker down and it will pass and their homes are raised and so the surge, they're probably protected from. some of these others, particularly some of the older construction didn't stand a chance in that and you hope that those were folks that is left or that those structures were not occupied. so, i think it's just about the concern for what they were facing, and the fact that, you know, you did have people that as the storm was in process, there were people that were really concerned with what they were seeing, with the water rising and whatnot. i am though and i think that kevin would agree, as the search and rescue folks have gone to a lot of the areas, fortunately, you're not finding like desperate people waving, you know, saying, you know-- it's usually, there's some people that are brought off the island and thankful, but many of the people on sanibel are saying, we're fine, thanks for

coming by and doing that. so, obviously, there's going to be more that happens in the next few days, but i think that the response was very, very quick. i think it absolutely has made a huge difference and if you look at where are we at in rescues now? over 700 rescues? >> over 700, thousand rescues, and cfo over 3,000 touch points and that's an important number, we've made contact with 3,000 people in the field and touch points in the field and rescued 700. >> and this is ongoing, those guys have worked hard and especially, you think about who was the first one to get over there, literally driving through a tropical storm across alligator alley, task for two out of miami. and who was task force two when did we see them last? at the surfside disaster and task for one and many or task forces from around the state and country that came in. so, when they're doing this, it's obviously important work, but these are not easy missions

to be doing. it was not easy for them to be on that pile in surfside and search for people and unfortunately, you know, find many, many people who were killed in that collapse. and so now they're in a situation, you know, where they're looking and hopefully, they find people that are okay, or that the buildings are empty, but you know, you don't want to have to see people that had gone-- that didn't make it through. so, it's a physical, it's putting yourself out there in harm's way, but it does also take a toll and kevin, why don't you talk about the mental health that we've been doing in here? >> sure, in the mental health category, if you recall, very early on in the desantis administration, first lady desantis took on the role for providing first responder mental health and hiring the first ever in the division, a state mental health coordinating officer. so, sarah newhouse is housed in

the division of emergency management bifurcated chain of command in the swayings and reports fot first lady to coordinate mental health services, not only in general, but focused on first responder mental health. so you're going to see already, there are already embedded what we call critical management teams or teams for short, those are already on site. and you're going to continue to see first responder, mental health resources come into the area and including fema's first responder mental health services, as well as individual mental health services, as well as ours. so we have a person, i'm titled, the state coordinating officer to coordinate the state agencies to respond to the disaster and we have a person to take the submental health and take that coordinating officer that works underneath me and the first lady for disaster mental health, okay, thanks. >> coming up today at 11:30

a.m. eastern, president biden will give an update on the federal response efforts to hurricane ian. we'll have live coverage of that from the white house here on c-span2. ♪♪ c-span is your unfiltered view of government funded by these television companies and more, including wow. >> the world has changed. today, the fast reliable internet connection is something that no one can live without, so, wow is there for our customers with speed reliability, value and choice, now more than ever it starts with great internet. >> wow supports c-span as a public service along with other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> former u.n. ambassador nikki

haley joined u.s. senate candidate herschel walker for a campaign event. the former player is challenging rafael warnock, it's considered a tossup according to the cook political report. hey! is everybody ready to get this party started? let's give it up for our attorney general chris carr. my name is rick, for those of you that don't know me, it is an honor to have you here today, what an amazing day, the rain has held off just for this event to make it happen. on behalf of the 150,000