Hurricane Helene made record landfall in Florida’s Big Bend as a Category 4 hurricane Thursday evening. The storm brought surges up to 20 feet, intense flooding and power outages.
“The magnitude of what we’re gonna see play out here is so severe with Helene,” said Michael Brennan, the director of the National Hurricane Center. “It doesn’t matter if you wouldn’t have had a hurricane for the last 20 years in this region. Those impacts are going to be life threatening in a, in a staggering way over the next 12 to 24 hours.”
Tallahassee Mayor John Dailey emphasized that Tallahassee had been preparing for a week to battle Hurricane Helene, stating, “The city as an institution has been working with the White House, with the governor’s office, with the county, with the school board to make sure that we have the necessary assets here”.
As of Thursday night, there had been one casualty related to Hurricane Helene in Tampa and pre-landfall emergency declarations for Florida, Georgia, Alabama and North Carolina by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
