Tampa mayor issues evacuation orders in the city

AccuWeather

Jane Castor, mayor of Tampa, Florida, shares the evacuation orders she's issued among other preparations as the city braces for the impacts of Hurricane Helene this Thursday, Sept. 26.

Transcript

00:00joining us now is Tampa Mayor Jane Castor. Mayor Castor, thank you again for joining us once again

00:06and again as you take a look at the forecast, you take a look at the impacts, what are your

00:10primary concerns ahead of the storm? Well our primary concerns are that our residents are aware

00:18of what's going on and that they have prepared themselves. We as a municipality have prepared

00:26as we do every year, always hoping for the best but preparing for the worst and in this particular

00:33with Helene, it's going to be as everybody likes to call it, that dirty side of the storm

00:40where it's coming up and bringing that storm surge into our bay. Estimated now anywhere between

00:49five to eight feet of storm surge and that is what we're very worried about. All right, if that's

00:56what you're worried about then we want to know if your teams are preparing for Helene maybe differently

01:02than other storms in the past. No, we're preparing the same way. We're looking at, we've already got

01:08evacuation orders mandatory for our Zone A residents and businesses and then we've been

01:15working to ensure that all of our storm drains are are clean so that we can

01:23send this storm water out as quickly as possible but we have had unprecedented rain events

01:32lately. I mean five inches in less than an hour at our airport which was literally historical

01:38and so we're doing all that we can to address those high water issues in our low-lying areas.

01:46Yeah, it's been such a wet month so far. Mayor Castor, you mentioned about the evacuations.

01:52How are they progressing and what do you want Tampa residents and visitors to do now

01:59and this evening to be ready? Yes, they are progressing well. You know, the way that

02:05the Tampa Bay region is geographically spread out, we have Pinellas County coming through

02:14Hillsborough County, our county, in order to evacuate and so they're moving through now and

02:20then also getting our residents and we've changed this philosophy in the past few years where

02:27you know you don't have to go to another state, just go to higher ground. Again, hiding from the

02:33wind and running from the water and so we want our residents, we have a lot of new people, we're

02:39one of the fastest growing cities in the nation and we want everybody to take this seriously.

02:45As I always say, you get in a confrontation with Mother Nature, Mother Nature wins 100% of the time

02:52so be prepared and heed the warnings. Well that's a quote we're going to be hearing a lot on the

02:56AccuWeather Network to consider that clipped and used in one of our sizzles and impressive there

03:00to talk about it. A lot of new people moving there so some folks may not be maybe as familiar

03:05with the challenges of the Tampa Bay geography. When it comes to big impacts, you know, the high

03:10winds, the massive flooding, the storm surge, what speaks to you most? The storm surge because the way

03:16that it is, you know, it's not something that people can say, well I'll just wait and see how

03:22things turn out. When that storm surge comes in at high tide, it's going to be fast and furious

03:28and so individuals need to heed the warnings and get out of the way of the water.

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