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‘Really heartbreaking’: DeSantis surveys Hurricane Idalia damage in hard-hit Big Bend area

Gov. Ron DeSantis and Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell walked through devastated areas of North Florida Thursday to “see first-hand” damage from powerful Hurricane Idalia.

“I’ve seen a lot of really heartbreaking damage,” DeSantis said at a news briefing from Steinhatchee Thursday afternoon. “When people lose a church, when they lose their home, when they lose a business … it’s really raw when you have your whole life’s work into a business and it ends up under five feet of water.”

President Biden announced on Thursday at FEMA in Washington he was planning to visit Florida on Saturday, also to see the devastation first-hand.

“What I saw from the land is a significant amount of flooding damage,” said Deanne Criswell, the administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“We understand that, particularly in this area, fishing is very important,” he said. ” … This is obviously going to be a blow to a lot of those folks involved in this industry.”

90,000 power outages remain in Florida after Hurricane Idalia as utilities, cooperatives continue repairs

Repairs in the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia cut power outages in Florida to 90,221 accounts by 9 a.m. Friday, just over two days after the storm struck the state.

Between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m., utility workers reduced the number of outages statewide overnight by nearly 13% from 103,000, data from the Public Service Commission shows.

The number of reported outages at one time peaked at 288,000 at 3 p.m. Wednesday.

The bulk of pending reconnections are in the Big Bend region where the Panhandle curves into the Florida peninsula. That includes Hamilton, Jefferson, Lafayette, Madison, Suwannee and Taylor counties, which are between 72% and 100% without electricity.

In Dixie County, roughly seven of every 10 households are powerless.

Approximately 476,000 power reconnections have occurred since the storm first struck the state’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday morning at a press conference from the Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee.

No plans to halt Medicaid unwinding in Hurricane Idalia-affected counties

The federal government sent letters to state Medicaid directors Aug. 30 saying it had 'identified issues where states are out of compliance with renewal requirements.'

Florida is not planning to suspend Medicaid redeterminations in counties hit by Hurricane Idalia, a top state official said Wednesday night.

Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) Secretary Jason Weida, whose agency oversees the multi-billion-dollar safety net health care program, said he had spoken to the head of the Department of Children and Families (DCF) the day before the storm hit and at that time there were no plans to pause the “unwinding” process currently underway.

Florida’s Medicaid rolls swelled during the COVID-19 pandemic because states were given extra federal funding. During the federal public health emergency states could not remove enrollees from the program even if their eligibility status had changed. That ended in the spring and states have been culling their rolls, a process that has been called “unwinding.”

Jimmy Patronis sees ‘silver lining’ for insurance market in track Idalia took

Florida’s Chief Financial Officer knows Hurricane Idalia was bad, but argues it could have been worse.

During an interview on CNBC, Jimmy Patronis pointed out the “silver lining” in the storm’s path, which included a Big Bend landfall.

“So the silver lining to this, it did go through one of the least populated areas of the state,” Patronis said during his appearance “Squawk Box.”

“It was a very narrow part of the state, but it was also a very fast-moving storm. So fast-moving storms don’t have an opportunity to dump as much rain. Flooding has a different effect when the water has to go somewhere. So again, if there was a path that Idalia could take, that was the best output for at least the insurance market in Florida.”

The good news is mitigated somewhat by larger market trends, including some new companies waiting out this year’s storm season, wanting to jump into Florida’s market to absorb 300,000 Citizens Property Insurance policies.