Gillum: City's storm response 'not perfect'

Red-eyed and raw with emotion, city of Tallahassee appointed officials appeared before commissioners Tuesday to publicly explain their Hurricane Hermine recovery efforts.

Some residents have complained — loudly and on social media — that the city didn’t work fast enough to restore power, clear roads and get outside help after the tropical system made landfall early Friday just south of town.

Commissioners and staff continued to swat back accusations the city turned down help from out-of-town utilities. But Mayor Andrew Gillum acknowledged room for improvement in the city’s storm response.

“Without a doubt, we’ve not been perfect in this process,” Gillum said during the emergency commission meeting.

City Electric Utility staff largely defended their handling of the Hermine response. Initially, the city said it would be a week before 90 percent of electric customers were online, a mark the city hit early Tuesday afternoon, when outages dropped below 11,000.

“We have hit our targets every day,” said Rob McGarrah, general manager of the Electric Utility. “I think we’re a little ahead of where we thought we’d be right now when we looked at the damage Friday.”

But that did little to ease the frustrations of some people still living without power. Gus Corbella, a Tallahassee lobbyist who lives in Betton Hills, said it had been 105 hours since he and his neighbors had power. He questioned whether the city would be able to respond properly to a stronger storm.

"We expect the best of you," he said. "And I know that people have worked really hard. It’s been 105 hours after sustained winds of 40 mph. What if they’d been 120?”

Sally West said her 88-year-old parents, who live in a single-family home at Westminster Oaks, didn’t have power restored until Monday morning. Her parents are on temperature-controlled medicine, she said, and others at the retirement community are on oxygen.

“I would like to see that community addressed and how we’re going to get them back on power sooner,” she said. “I would have much rather seen them get power on before me.”

City officials gave no timetable on when all customers would have power restored to all customers, including some in hard-hit Midtown.

“It’s literally a battle of street by street, home by home,” said Reese Goad, deputy city manager.

Several appointed officials appeared exhausted — physically and emotionally— at the meeting. City Manager Rick Fernandez' eyes welled up with tears after he was handed a thank-you note written by a Florida High student. McGarrah also choked up when asked about the efforts of utility workers.

"They're busting their tails," he said.

City officials defended their use of crews from out-of-town utilities, saying they accepted all the help they could. McGarrah explained he has to embed his own people in outside crews for safety reasons and that the city had reached a “saturation point” with mutual-aid crews.

“We have looked at this every day throughout this process because our goal is to get the customers back as quickly as we can,” he said. “But we think we’ve had the right mix of folks throughout all of this, and we have been following the standard practices in our business.”

Commissioners thanked city staff for their hard work and suggested some of the backlash was unfair. They also praised Gillum — who has faced criticism from the public and sparred with Gov. Rick Scott over the city’s efforts.

Gillum actually thanked the Governor’s Office and the Department of Transportation for their help during the storm response. But he expressed dismay over some of the acrimony between City Hall and the state. The Governor’s Office at one point said the city had turned down “cut and toss” debris removal help from DOT.

“I just thought in the midst of a crisis it was unhelpful to communicate that level of division to the public," he said. "At that time, we still had tens of thousands that were out of power. For them to perceive that there is some breakdown or dysfunction between their local responders and the state government is completely unhelpful.”

Commissioner Curtis Richardson said there had been “malicious rumors” the city was turning down help based on union or partisan concerns. Commissioner Gil Ziffer said some City Hall critics were using the storm for their own purposes.

“This city took a lot of heat for a couple of days for our ‘lack of response,’” he said. “Well, they’re just wrong. If you’re out there, and you’re using this situation for political gain, stop it.”

Gillum said the city will do an internal review of the storm response once the recovery is over. He also said commissioners would review policies and ordinances “to figure out how we do this better.”

To people still without power, Gillum pledged relief will come.

“We want them to know that help is still on the way, to not lose faith in that process,” he said. “It’s not easy — we know that.”

Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or follow @JeffBurlew on Twitter.