Florida

TexasTowelie

(112,246 posts) Mon Oct 7, 2019, 08:27 AM Oct 2019

As Hurricane Michael anniversary nears, Rebuild 850 officials say recovery could take a decade

One week before the anniversary of Hurricane Michael’s landfall in Mexico Beach, a nonprofit group created to help raise money for the recovery efforts is reminding the public of the devastation the Category 5 storm brought to North Florida.

At a news conference in Tallahassee Thursday, leaders of Rebuild 850 felt their urgent message bore repeating, that it will be a decade before the Panhandle recovers and that billions of dollars in public and private financial aid and volunteer hours are still needed.

“We’re sort of lost up here in the Panhandle,” said former House Speaker Allan Bense, a co-chair of Rebuild 850 and Bay County businessman. “We are not Miami, Melbourne or Jacksonville. The Panhandle is more Southern Alabama and always will be. We are off the radar screen, if we were ever on it.”

Their message echoed remarks made when the group launched in November 2018. Since then it has helped raise $500,000 for Volunteer Florida, which has earmarked about $7 million in donations for the Michael-ravaged Panhandle.

Read more: https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/local/state/2019/10/03/panhandle-recovery-michael-could-take-decade-officials-say/3853804002/

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As Hurricane Michael anniversary nears, Rebuild 850 officials say recovery could take a decade (Original Post) TexasTowelie Oct 2019 OP

Trump was there a few months back Zorro Oct 2019 #1

And the shutdown over New Years 2019. irisblue Oct 2019 #2

Zorro

(15,740 posts)

1. Trump was there a few months back

Reply to TexasTowelie (Original post)

Mon Oct 7, 2019, 02:17 PM

Oct 2019

and made repeated promises about federal aid for the Panhandle, if I recollect.

How's that working out?

irisblue

(32,980 posts)

2. And the shutdown over New Years 2019.

Reply to TexasTowelie (Original post)

Mon Oct 7, 2019, 02:30 PM

Oct 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/us/florida-government-shutdown-marianna.html. snip-"But prison workers were facing trouble even before the partial government shutdown. At least two-thirds of the Marianna staff members sustained hurricane damage to their homes, according to prison managers. The local prison officers’ union estimated that 10 percent of its affected members experienced total property losses."

snip-"A few miles away, another prison employee, Crystal Minton, accompanied her fiancé to a friend’s house to help clear the remnants of a metal roof mangled by the hurricane. Ms. Minton, a 38-year-old secretary, said she had obtained permission from the warden to put off her Mississippi duty until early February because she is a single mother caring for disabled parents. Her fiancé plans to take vacation days to look after Ms. Minton’s 7-year-old twins once she has to go to work.

The shutdown on top of the hurricane has caused Ms. Minton to rethink a lot of things.

“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

Wonder how Minton feels now, trump sure put a hurt on her.

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