Tampa Bay region expecting extensive damage from Helene

AccuWeather

Up to 40 million people are expected to be impacted by Hurricane Helene when the storm makes landfall on Sept. 26. Leslie Hudson reports from Tampa where a hospital is ramping up storm preparations.

Transcript

00:00It's been a pretty busy morning here, of course, the hospital getting ready for

00:04Haleen and this is a level one critical care hospital so it's very important that operations

00:09run as normal as possible and one of the reasons they can run normal or as close as normal as you

00:14can when a hurricane is going to be paralleling your city is what you see over here. These are

00:19called aquifenses and this is the fourth year the hospital has used the aquifense to help mitigate

00:25flooding around the perimeter of the hospital. It's worked very successfully for them over the

00:30last couple of years. They were the first hospital in the country to use this aquifense. It is a very

00:36powerful tool in helping the hospital to maintain normal operations. We shot some video earlier

00:42today. This is a three-day process and the workers were out today doing some more of the wall. Now

00:48they're going to continue to work on the wall in stages. Tomorrow they'll do their last touches

00:53to get the last piece of that fence up so that the employees can come and go as they need to go

00:59when their shifts come and go. Families can come into the hospital and operations will continue

01:04as normal. Now last year Adalia did not make a direct impact here in Tampa but they did get some

01:09impacts. They did see some low-level flooding. We talked to the director of operations that's in

01:14charge of putting these fences up and he explained how this all works and how much wind these fences

01:20can withstand. So they're designed for 130 mile an hour winds and these panels here are the tallest

01:29that they make. They're nine feet tall so nine feet of water which we're about eight feet above

01:35sea level right where we're standing so that's about 17 feet in total for this part of the

01:40campus. And is this considered the most vulnerable part where we are right now? It's certainly the

01:44lowest part. I think you know when you're looking at a perimeter of a building every part's a

01:50vulnerability but in terms of the amount of water the most water would be here.

01:57So last year with Hurricane Adalia they got a storm surge in this area around four to seven

02:03feet. With Helene the storm surge is expected to be five to eight feet or even higher so there is

02:09some concern there will be some low-lying flooding. They did get about a two to three foot surge here

02:15at the hospital right where I shot that interview. So they are expecting inundation

02:20even though Helene stays well away from the Tampa area. The larger concern of course is high tide

02:25which will be around 11 p.m. as Adalia or excuse me as Helene gets to its closest point to Tampa.

02:32So again that southwest wind flow could be a major problem for the surge in this area. The hospital

02:38not so much again they've mitigated the problem with the fencing but there is the concern for

02:44that storm surge in the surrounding area and there is a mandatory evacuation here in Hillsborough

02:48County where we are for zone A. That is the immediate coastline that's also true for Pinellas

02:54and also Manatee and several of the Sarasota County. Many of the counties here are under

02:58that mandatory evacuation for zone A along the immediate coastline. So folks are expecting to

03:03see some inundations some storm surge here at the hospital. They'll continue their operations

03:08and should have everything zipped up and ready to roll when Helene comes by tomorrow.

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