Tampa mayor on evacuations, storm preparations ahead of Hurricane Ian

Judy Woodruff:

And now let's hear more about the preparations and the concerns in the Tampa area.

William Brangham is back with that.

William Brangham:

As we have been reporting, major evacuations are continuing this evening. And officials are warning about a significant storm surge that could hit Tampa and Southwest Florida very hard.

Jane Castor is the mayor of Tampa. And she joins me now from the emergency operations center in that city.

Mayor Castor, thank you so much for being here up.

Could you just give us a sense of how preparations are going right now?

Jane Castor (D), Mayor of Tampa, Florida: Well, actually we are finished with our preparations.

We have been in that for quite some time. But we have called for a mandatory evacuation in Zone A. For those who aren't familiar with Tampa, we have over 120 miles of coastline just in our city. So, Zone A is really those individuals that are in close proximity to the water. So we have we have evacuated individuals in that zone. And we have given over 50,000 sandbags out.

We have prepared as much as we possibly can here in the city of Tampa. Our residents are heeding the warnings, and they are leaving for higher ground. And we have told them, you don't have to leave the state. We just need you to get up to higher ground out of the storm surge, which, at this point, is still anticipated to be anywhere between 10 and 15 feet, which is simply catastrophic.

William Brangham:

Indeed.

I want to ask you about those evacuations, because the head of FEMA today echoed a concern that some people share that residents may not heed those warnings, in part because it feels like, especially along the Gulf Coast, there's warnings quite often, and the residents of your city may not have had much experience with a direct hurricane coming into their neighborhood.

Are you confident that people are going to heed the warning and get out while they can?

Jane Castor:

Yes.

From all indications that we have seen on our interstates, on our expressways, individuals are leaving northward and easterly out of the city of Tampa. And I think that looking at the severity of the hurricanes over the last couple of years, even the most seasoned of us Floridians understand that a 10-to-15-foot tidal surge is something that you don't need to take for granted.

And you certainly don't to see — need to see if you can ride that out. As for the newer residents in our community, hopefully, they will heed that warning as well and understand that this is not something that we should wait and see what happens. We need to get out of the way of this. As we like to say, you hide from the wind and run from the water.

And so we're trying to get everyone out of the way of that storm surge.

William Brangham:

As you well know, much of your city is very low-lying. And there has been a lot of development right up along the coast because everyone loves to live near the beach.

And those two factors, the low-lying and the lots of people living near the, water makes your city one of the most vulnerable, what's considered one of the most vulnerable cities to this kind of storm surge. How much does that worry you, that this really could be an unprecedented event for your city?

Jane Castor:

Well, that certainly is a concern for me.

But what is most concerning is really our geographic layout in the Tampa Bay area. Our bay is very, very shallow. And so the original predictions of Hurricane Ian stalling right outside of Tampa Bay for anywhere from 24 to 48 hours, dropping 20 to 30 inches of rain on us with 10-to-15-foot tidal surges, was really nothing short of catastrophic.

So that concerns me a lot more than the development or the idea that individuals aren't going to get out of harm's way.

William Brangham:

I know you spoke with President Biden. You were among several mayors who spoke with him earlier today.

What did you convey to him about what you most need now and what you might most need later?

Jane Castor:

Well, I, first and foremost, conveyed my appreciation.

We have had incredible collaboration, not only on the local level here in the Tampa Bay with our partners in Hillsborough County, but in the state too, with the state emergency manager and on the federal level with FEMA. Everybody has been very collaborative. They have resources staged all over.

So, we have — as far as governmental resources, we either have them here in our community or they're being staged and they're available. And then, talking to our private partners, with our electric companies, talking to the communications providers, gas companies, just making sure that everybody has those resources prepositioned to be in here as soon as the wind stops blowing.

William Brangham:

Mayor Jane Castor of Tampa, Florida, we wish you all the best, and hope this — you all get through this storm OK.

Thank you so much for talking with us.

Jane Castor:

Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.