A couple dozen local employees are fanning out across the county to assess damage from Tropical Storm Irma.
Tuesday morning emergency management officials split up Leon County by zip code, and sent out teams of two to canvass neighborhoods searching for damage. Emergency Manager Kevin Peters says as of noon the teams logged just shy of sixty reports.
“But early indications are most of the damage appears to be minor in nature,” Peters says.
“Again that’s just half a day’s worth of work, and we’re going to spend probably a couple of days dealing with the business of driving around and searching for the information.”
Peters is quick to warn it still early, and at seven hundred square miles, Leon County is a lot of territory to cover. State officials need county level data to apply for money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Peters says, “You have to be able to prove and have data that shows the level of the impact to a community that can be submitted, and then the state—we give it all to the state of Florida. It’ll be consolidated and a statewide report will be given to the FEMA officials for their assessment.”
Peters says cataloging damage can also help the county connect residents with recovery services through groups like the Red Cross.
