Instead of staying here the following day. The reason was that at that time and in that moment the strongest storm ever recorded out of the flick was bearing down first out of the atlantic was bearing down first on the caribbean not just towards florida but the city in which i lived and the nation watched over the next few days as that storm took its track. There has been a lot said about Hurricane Irma since that time. I heard some say that it could have been worse, and i imagine some particular instances perhaps that is true. Had that storm entered through tampa bay in florida, it would have been an incal cliewbl lost through the counties of miamidade, broward and palm beach counties, the Economic Loss would have been very significant. So its possible that the storm could have had an even greater impact. But its difficult to say that to the people that were impacted by it. It was a unique storm in a lot of different ways. The sheer scope of it. One of the things that really kind of perplexed people in florida, including myself, who were thinking perhaps we should move our families to another part of the state because we have a very Good Building code in florida but there is no structures under our Building Code that could withstand the hurricane winds of a category 4 storm. Very difficult to do that unless there is a heightened level of construction. One of the difficult things about figuring out where to go is the whole state was covered by it. It was a huge storm in its size and an enormous storm in its impact. I know for a fact dozens of people who left south florida as an example, drove to another part of the state only to find themselves actually worse off than they would have been had they stayed home. There is no way to know that at the time. I can tell you maybe its because of our history with hurricane. In 1992 at the university of florida i was home, the semester was about to begin and hurricane andrew came barreling through there and fundamentally altered what south dade looked like and whether it was the impact of the storms in 2004 or 2005 or perhaps it was the images from harvey from just a few weeks ago and the impact it has had on houston and the state of texas, people took the threat incredibly seriously and massive evacuation, perhaps the single largest evacuation in the history of the united states. In any event, the storm did come and we measure the impact of the storm first and foremost by the loss of life. And there are 59 people who lost their lives directly related to the storm in juan way or another. In one way or another. 11 of those people died after the storm from Carbon Monoxide poisoning. You lose your power, people run these generators, sometimes running them inside their home, Carbon Monoxide gets on them and before you know it they are dead. At least a dozen others didnt die but it posed an incredible threat after storms we see every time. Nine people died in Monroe County, some from natural causes, although its hard to imagine that someone who had a heart attack in the middle of a storm or in the aftermath wasnt somehow related to the stress that such storm brings. Of course we all saw the horrifying news last week that eight Senior Citizens have lost their lives because of Nursing Homes air conditioning unit failed them, and in the middle of the night the heat became unbearable and they passed. But you can only think despite these horrible tragedies of losing 59 people, how many more would have died had they not heeded the warnings to evacuate. So i begin talking about the storm today by just thanking the men and women who responded before and after the storm and even during it, who kept so many people safe. And they did so even though their own families were being impacted by the storm. You see a Police Officer or firefighter from a community in florida, they have homes. They have children. They have families. And they too are concerned about the impact it could have on them. And so even as theyre out there getting ready, getting the rest of us ready, they have to think about themselves and about their own families. So we thank them for the extraordinary work they do every day, but in particular at this moment because of the storm. We think about the national guard. These are people that on monday or tuesday of that week were at the Accounting Firm or doing whatever their job might be, were called up and within a matter of hours found themselves on the road and headed toward an uncertain number of days that lie ahead. We think of all the people throughout the Emergency Operation centers from the state one and the capital to all the counties who put in dozens of hours a day over a dozen hours a day, if not more, preparing to handle the storm. We thank the coast guard for the extraordinary work they do and the department of defense, particularly the navy, who were prepared to respond and did so to the storm, even as many of them were coming off similar duty just a few days earlier or a few weeks earlier responding to harvey. Of course we want to thank the First Responders that came in from all over the country. I was in the florida keys on friday, and i ran into firefighters and Police Officers from as far away as colorado. And we thank them for coming all the way here to help us. Could not have done it without them. I would also be remiss if i didnt thank the National Hurricane center and the improvements that have continued to happen year after year, which have helped improve not just the forecast track of a storm, but its intensity. Even though i can tell you all hurricanes are bad. Obviously the stronger they get, the more damaging they become. And i would just say that the work they do is we had five, six days to get ready for this and it all began because the National Hurricane center they dont always have that much time were able to give us and everyone the proper notice. You cant carry out these e eevacuations unless youve got accurate meteorological information. They did an extraordinary job and continue to do so now monitoring a new storm that tomorrow is going to make landfall over the island of puerto rico potentially as a category 5. But certainly a category 4. Ill talk about that more in a moment. So we thank them and so many others that i too many to mention that we would run out of time but we thank them. So lets first talk about some of the challenges. The first challenge, as i said earlier, is the scope of the storm. If you know anything about florida, it is a peninsula, Third Largest state in the country in terms of population. But its a peninsula that sticks out into the gulf of mexico and into the caribbean basin there in the florida straits. Its a huge state. From jacksonville, florida, in the northeast, all the way down to key west is a long distance. And we are talking about a storm that had damage in key west, damage in jacksonville and the southwest to naples and the central part of the state and literally the entire state of florida was impacted by the storm because of its size and because of the route that it took. And and that poses all kind of challenges. Our Emergency Operations system is built on the idea that if two counties are hit, all the other counties help respond. Well, every county was being hit, every county was getting ready. So that right away put a real strain on our Emergency Operations system. Because you were counting on other counties being able to help you, but they couldnt because they themselves were getting ready to deal with the impact of the storm on them. You realize that there were prepositioned assets in alabama, georgia ready to come down and help us, but they themselves were also in the track of Tropical Storm winds headed in that direction, not to mention the impact it would have on their ability to get down to us. So it impacted the entire state. And, you know, we are we have gotten trained in watching these storms to see images of destroyed buildings, and obviously thats a terrible thing. We lived that through andrew, and we have our share of that. If you see the images of the florida keys, you can tell very quickly that a storm wept through there. But i tell you that underneath the surface, underneath the structures that might be standing and the roofs that are still intact are deep scars and damage that will be around and impacting us for months if not years to come. Think, for example, of the florida keys. If you havent been there, it is an incredibly unique place. There is only one way in, one way out. Its a chain of Little Islands built on coral rock formation. Its truly unique. The further west in the keys you get, the more southwest you turn, the more unique it gets. Its where i have spent many days. Some of the best memories as a family were made in the florida keys. I spent a number of days there not too long ago before the storm. If you know the florida keys, you know this is not a place with a bunch of Johnny Rockets and t. G. I. Fridays. It has a lot of Small Businesses, the bait shops, charter captains, everything in between. It has a lot of Small Businesses. Many of them are generational businesses. The family is there and have been doing it 60 years. Those businesses are literally going to have no customers now and for the foreseeable future. They still dont have power in many places. They still dont have internet. They still dont have fuel. And they certainly dont have tourists. I want you to imagine for a moment that you are the owner of a small restaurant and you have to go 30, 60 days without any revenue. I can tell you most businesses dont have that kind of reserves, not to mention your employees who may not get paid. You think about the florida keys. Its an expensive place to live because its a valuable piece of land right on the water, which is an enormous challenge for the work force. You know, the people that work in the keys who dont want to drive three and a half days a day from south dade to get down to the lower keys or anywhere, for that matter, depending on the day. That Housing Stock in many cases, there is trailer parks and mobile homes or small apartments. The trailers are gone. The apartments could have suffered water damage, but at a minimum they are certainly not livable in many cases now because of water and wind damage. You think about florida agriculture. I know florida is not often thought about as an agricultural state. I promise you, it has an extraordinary presence of agriculture in our state and a Great Variety of crop. Floridas one of the largest Cattle Producers in the country. You dont associate florida with cattle, but its an enormous part of our agriculture industry. Our signature crop is citrus. Sugar cane growers. Fresh vegetables. The farm the nurseries, the nurseries. All of these tropical plants that you see, whether its in big developments or the indoor plants, a lot of that is grown in florida. Dairies. Florida is a dairy provider to much of the southeast. Every single one of them has suffered significant damage, and in the case of a couple of them, catastrophic damage. The Citrus Industry was already being hurt by Citrus Greening, a disease that kills the tree. Well, i can tell you, you go to any of those grove senator nelson and i went to a grove after the storm. Half of it was on the ground and more dropping. It was gone. The farmer takes it, the whole fruit goes to the whole fruit market. The bulk of it goes to the juicing market. Once that fruit hits water much of it was green so it wasnt even ready. Once it hits floodwater, you cant tell it, you cant use it. The f. D. A. Says it can no longer be consumed safely. They lost all of that. On top of the fact that their yields were already lower historically. Because of greening, they lost the fruit they had. It gets worse. They lost trees. Its not simple. You dont go to home depot and buy an orange tree and put it in the grouped and next year get the oranges. These new trees, they take at least four years before they can produce the fruit to sell, if it survives greening. They lost trees, and they are still losing fruit, and they will still lose more trees. Some of those groves are under water. All of that water sitting on those roots, those trees will not survive. This is a catastrophe for the Citrus Industry and a running tally every single day that goes on. I dont mean to leave any of these out, but i can tell you some truths. Florida vegetables, there will be no florida vegetables, fresh vegetables in november. Those green beans that many of you are eating on thanksgiving will not come from florida this year. Well have to make up the gap from foreign producers because that crop is gone entirely. So i dont mean to leave any of them out. Im just telling you the hit to agriculture was extraordinary, and unfortunately for agriculture and its not meanspirited why this happens, but there is not a lot of agriculture near major metropolitan centers, meaning there is not as much media coverage. Im not here to beat up the media. In fact, i thank the media and i have done so because a lot of the work they did on the National Networks and the local news is what got so many people motivated to get up and go out of harms way. But there arent a lot of camera crews stationed live from a citrus grove, so the power gets back on and the schools reopen and people forget that these farmers, most of whom, by the way, are not wealthy landowners from the movies. Some of these are fourth generation growers who have been on that land and producing and are already stretched because of some of the challenges they have, whether its in trade or whether its Citrus Greening or whatever the challenges might be. Its just gotten worse for them. And do you know who else got hurt boy it . Its not just the dproars. Its the entire industry that services it, everyone. And the towns built around them. Big trouble. Truly a catastrophic agricultural event in every part of the state. Virtually none of floridas agriculture was went without being impacted by this. Think about the Migrant Workers that work there. Some of whom were afraid to come forward because of their immigration status. They thought if they showed up at a shelter, they would be deported. But more importantly, in terms of life, some of them have nowhere to live. Their housing to begin with is precarious. A lot of mobile homes. Damaged by water. No electricity. Not near a metropolitan center, and afraid to come out. Thank god for so many groups that have come forward to try to help them. You know, we scoff about power outages. I can tell you, i dont know how people lived in florida before the invention of the air conditioning, but the heat and the humidity is an inconvenience for a lot of people. Its lifethreatening in the case of the Senior Citizen or people who require refrigerated pharmaceuticals for their survival. An extraordinary impact on them. So all these things have a true impact on many of the challenges we now face. A special focus is on, for example, Monroe County, the florida keys. This storm threatens the fundamentally to fundamentally alter the character of Monroe County if we do not help the florida keys, because those trailer parks are on valuable land, and the owners of that land are going to be tempted to build on them, not mobile homes again, but build on them structures designed for visitors or people that can pay more money. That means youre going to lose your Housing Stock but it ultimately means youre going to lose the character of the place. All those Small Businesses that service the fishing boats, the diving. We have got the greatest collection of coral reefs in the world right off marathon by sombrero key, in the florida keys. All of that. Theyre going to be out of business for a long time. Can they survive . I dont know. Small business owners, people that might own an Apartment Building and they use it in the summer for their family and then they rent it in the winter. Well, its damaged. They cant rent it this year. Guess what . They may not be able to pay the mortgage, which will lead to foreclosure. Real challenges in Monroe County. I mentioned agriculture. I honestly do not know how florida agriculture, particularly citrus, can recover from the storm without significant help. Senior citizens. This storm exposed a real vulnerability to a state with so many seniors. And its not just Nursing Homes. We have Apartment Buildings, section 8 h. U. D. Housing and the like. Entire Apartment Buildings. 13, 14story towers of Apartment Buildings populated by Senior Citizens. Let me tell you what happens when the power goes out. The first thing is all the food in the refrigerator rots. So within 48 hours, i dont care how much they stored for the hurricane, they can no longer eat a lot of the food they need for their nutrition. You may say well, why dont they just get up and go see a relative or go somewhere that is handing out food . They are on the 13th or 12th floor. The elevator doesnt walk. They cant walk down 13 flights of stairs. This exposed the real vulnerability that we will have to examine. And then debris removal. Some of these are small counties. Some of these counties are still owed money from storms last year. Fema disburses the funds to the state. The state hasnt disbursed it to them yet. Now they have to go out and hire, hundreds of