FORT PIERCE, Fla. — This morning I met with George Landry, St. Lucie County's administrator, at the Fenn Center in Fort Pierce and asked about the damage caused by Hurricane Milton and the tornadoes that the storm spawned.
"We have, probably, we're over five to 600 homes that have had some impact, probably over 200 that have been just totally destroyed, close to 200 with major destruction, you know, which means they're going to probably need a total rebuild as well. And then total, all in all, at least eight to 900 structures that have some impact from this and we're early estimates of almost $500 million," Landry said.
The county said that at least 146 homes sustained major damage, while at least 360 homes had minor damage.
The county's estimate of $485,000,000 doesn't include the cities of Port St. Lucie or Fort Pierce.
"That's just the county unincorporated. So each of the cities do their own assessments and turn that in [to FEMA]," said Landry.
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Right now the Fenn Center, which normally serves as a special needs shelter during a storm, is in MARC (Multi-Agency Resource Center) mode.
"What we do is we bring in our local nonprofits that are here, some faith-based [organizations and] the state brings in Department of Emergency Management personnel. We try to get some FEMA folks in, and it's a one-stop. So, somebody that has been impacted by the storm, we don't know what level of impact they have. So we bring all these resources to one place so they're not running around town trying to find what to do," said Landry.
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The county hopes the Fenn Center will go into FEMA mode by Friday.
"[The Fenn Center will] transition to a, what's called a disaster recovery center. It becomes a FEMA-run organization. So the county's not running it. FEMA is running it. They have triple the resources. ...It'll just basically double the footprint of what capabilities are here to serve the public," Landry said.
Landry said FEMA is experiencing a shortage of workers because they've been deployed to areas affected by Hurricane Helene. Areas like Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
"In our conversations with FEMA... they have got people deployed to the Carolinas, you know, Georgia, Tennessee, and then we have over 50 counties in Florida that were affected by this," Landry said. "So like any agency, FEMA doesn't have an army of people to sign up for this stuff. So they've depleted all their assets, and they're pulling from other federal agencies, training them up on how to help people with FEMA recovery. And they're deploying them out as fast as possible."
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Landry added: "So I gotta imagine, from their side, you know, they're running a 24/7 operation, bringing people from everywhere, getting them spun up as fast as they can, a laptop, Wi-Fi and sending them out to the field to do stuff. So you know, we're we're blessed to have what we have from FEMA right now, and we know more help is coming. And they've been a great partner, and they've been very communicative. So you know, we're very thankful for what we're getting, and we know that there's more help on the way right now.
St. Lucie County started with five FEMA workers this week and they are hoping to have just over 20 by the end of the week.
"Congressman Mast [and] Senator Rubio have asked their staff to come out to some of our rural and remote locations and set up some laptops and sign people up for FEMA. ...And they're going up to some of the smaller areas," Landry said.
