(dramatic music)
>>Welcome back.
Hurricane season begins in a couple of weeks.
Last year during Hurricane Ian,
149 people died on Florida's west coast
because officials failed to adequately warn residents
of the need to evacuate.
Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber
has been trying to piece together
what happened so he can learn from it.
As the mayor of a barrier island,
when you see that happen on the other side
of the state to another barrier island community,
what goes through your mind and how do you look at that?
Or do you look at that and play out those scenarios?
How would we have handled it here?
What do we learn from that?
Talk about that a little bit.
>>Well, by the way, it's exactly what you do
because 149 people really shouldn't die.
You know, in this century, frankly, the last time
that many people died in a Florida hurricane was 1935.
So it's almost a century ago
before all of the advances of meteorological
predictive tools and all the other things we have
like communication network.
So that really shouldn't happen.
So of course, a city like mine, the county
and the state ought to be looking at how did that happen
and what do we do to make sure it doesn't happen again?
>>And in the course of that,
my understanding is you tried to get some documentation
like I think the governor promised an after action report
and I believe you recently tried to see
if there was ever a report written.
What's the status of it? Do you know?
>>Yeah, well, we've been very focused.
My city's been very focused on this.
Our emergency managers, our fire department
as well as the county.
Since the hurricane, because obviously
with so many barrier islands in Dade County,
you want to know what happened.
Was there a problem with the evacuation?
Was it messaging?
Why did so many elderly people die?
Was there a problem with special needs evacuations?
So in, you know, in October
the governor said there would be an after action review
which we were looking forward to
because obviously that's the best way to prepare
for that kind of peril.
But apparently there has been no
after action work done by the state of Florida.
And so, you know
our county and our city will go it alone.
>>How do you, I guess one of the questions
becomes who ultimately is is responsible here?
I think the governor during that time was telling folks
listen to your local authorities.
Listen to your local officials.
So is it, I guess, I don't know if it's all
of the above answer, but it seems like there was a delay
in particularly Charlotte County
where a lot of the deaths occurred
in announcing an evacuation or ordering an evacuation.
Is that on them?
Is there someone like the governor
who should have the larger picture and be more forceful?
How do you view that as a mayor yourself?
>>Well Lee County delayed, even though it was next door
to Charlotte County and almost half the deaths were there.
And look, one of the problems clearly
if you listened to the people who survived
is they said they didn't know they had to leave.
And we have so many new residents in Florida, especially
in South Florida,
in my city and in throughout the county
that many of them may not understand
that evacuation means you gotta go.
Not that it's just , you know
something you could stick around and ride out with,
especially in a low lying area like my city or others.
I think there was a problem in communication, obviously
because too many people stayed behind.
There was a problem in evacuation timing because
too many people didn't have enough time to evacuate.
You know, those are questions we've gotta figure out,
because the weather is not getting better.
We know that.
Climate events are more extreme and we have to
figure out and practice exactly how we're going to do
and what we're gonna do.
And although that's a county decision, in most respects,
it is a state decision from a sort of
you know, you've always seen
the governor giving people warning.
I remember Governor Scott, you know
telling people who were outside of the zone
get ready to leave.
It's dangerous, it's really bad.
And sort of trying to ring the alarm very loudly
because the governor has the most significant voice
in the state and his emergency managers, you know,
are really fuller and more false and than everybody else's.
So to a great extent, the governor is the defacto leader
of any emergency management crisis.
And what he says is, what is most important
and telling people to listen to whatever someone else
is saying probably isn't sufficient.
But I think we need to look at that, and that's why
we need an after action report, because
if it's a communication issue, then we need to
certainly address that before the next hurricane.
And the hurricane season begins in a couple weeks.
>>I'm sure you probably do drills, you know.
>>Yeah our city's very sophisticated.
We do a tabletop exercise every year where
we test ourselves.
This year, I know Mayor Levine-Cava and I have been talking
about doing a countywide sort of effort to deal
with some of the issues from Hurricane Ian.
My commission actually allocated money so that we could
you know, beef up our exercises to incorporate some
of Hurricane Ian's concerns.
Look, when 149 people die in a hurricane
in a slow moving hurricane, something happened because that
that you can't, nobody can say those deaths were inevitable
and there was nothing we could have done about it.
So we've gotta explore that, not to place blame
but rather to figure out what went wrong,
and make sure it doesn't happen elsewhere.
Imagine in the southeast coast where the population
concentration is so much more than the Naples area.
Imagine what would happen here if the exact
same thing happened.
We don't wanna imagine, we wanna
we wanna prepare for it.
>>I can't help but wonder if when the storm was coming
at the time, of course we were still dealing with COVID
and the effects of the pandemic.
And the governor had made the argument
that we're a free state,
that people have to take individual responsibility.
And so therefore, it's not really government's place to
tell people to wear masks or to do certain mandatory things.
And so, you know, I almost wonder if that mentality
when it came to his approach to COVID
ended up having some impact of how
he dealt with Hurricane Ian as approached.
>>Well, that's why we need to figure out what happened.
I mean, and you're right.
I mean, telling people to listen to their local, you know
county emergency management person is accurate.
They should do that, obviously.
But the governor has a very unique bullhorn
and I remember my predecessor, Philip Levine
when there was a big hurricane coming
was literally on TV screaming at people to leave.
I've seen other governors do that
because they know people will listen to them.
And that's why we all say the same thing, by the way
because we want everybody to act in the same way.
Look, I'm very disappointed
in the aftermath as much as anything,
because 149 people dying
is a spectacular tragedy, that's unprecedented
almost a century in a Florida hurricane.
Every other time there has been, you know
something like this.
In my experience, the governors
and the legislatures focus on it.
After Hurricane Andrew,
governor Chiles and the legislature fixed the building code
started cat funds to protect people and property.
After 9/11, Jeb Bush top tp bottom review
of our anti-terrorism effort in the state of Florida.
All of this was bipartisan.
All of it was just, let's figure it out
let's solve this because it's too big a problem.
We have been focused on, you know
Mickey Mouse and pronouns and all this other silliness
rather than focusing on what is really important
which is making sure we're safe
if we have one of these events again
>>We'll be right back.