State Representative Allison Tant of Tallahassee represents Madison County and parts of Jefferson and Leon. North Central Florida hasn’t recovered from Hurricane Idalia not quite a year ago, and Tant spent Sunday racing from one county’s emergency operations center to another. As she told WFSU on Sunday night, she had participated in a call that morning with the National Weather Service and the Madison County Emergency Operations Center.
Allison Tant: “…and it was a very sobering call. We still have people in Madison County whose median income is a little over $20,000 a year, living with tarps over their homes. Consequently, those tarps are going to be probably overcome with water over the next few days. That call also indicated that with this storm, there are going to be hurricane-force winds. They’re expecting – of course, you know, everything’s subject to change, right? – 80 miles per hour, 75-80, which is right there at a Category 1. They’re expecting flooding on the Withlacoochee River, which is a significant issue for Madison County. That River, when it overflows, a lot of, um…fecal matter comes with it, and so it floods the private wells.
WFSU: When we spoke last year after Hurricane Idalia, you told me about special circumstances in Madison County that …well, for instance, that the trees haven’t been subject to a hurricane…
AT: Right. Prior to Idalia, there was no written or oral history in Madison County of any wind event. And so those trees are centuries and centuries old. And because they’re that old and they haven’t been tested, they’re giant. And so when they come down, the damage is astonishing, and a volunteer group with a handsaw is just not going to be able to cut the tree into pieces and move it off – particularly private property, much less off of thoroughfares or even private property that is used for public conveyance, like EMS, fire, ambulance, all of that.