A 100-year-old oak tree fell on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ family home—the governor’s mansion—in Tallahassee after Hurricane Idalia made landfall in the area on Wednesday morning.
The development was confirmed by Mr. DeSantis’ wife, Casey DeSantis, in a social media post on Wednesday. Mrs. DeSantis said that she and their three children were home at the time of the incident.
A photo showed a large tree that appeared to be split in half due to the storm, which hit Florida’s Big Bend area with 125 mph winds as a strong Category 3 storm. It has later been downgraded to Category 1 as it passes over Georgia and the Carolinas.
Mr. DeSantis wasn’t home at the time because he was at a live news conference in Tallahassee, responding to the storm. A reporter asked him a question about the incident, and he confirmed his wife called him.
Mr. DeSantis canceled all his 2024 presidential campaign events earlier this week, instead choosing to stay in Florida to deal with the storm preparation and recovery. He’s been holding multiple press conferences per day across Florida as the storm hits, and he declared a state of emergency earlier this week.
Hurricane Update
As of 2 p.m. Wednesday, an update from the National Hurricane Center said that Idalia, a borderline Category 1 storm with 75 mph winds, was moving across southeastern Georgia, while river and flash flooding was likely in the state and the Carolinas later in the day and Thursday. The storm is forecast to hit South Carolina as a hurricane by late Wednesday night before passing over both Carolinas as a tropical storm, and by then, it will pass into the Atlantic Ocean.More than 330,000 customers in Florida and Georgia were without electricity while rushing water-covered streets near the coast. As the eye moved inland, high winds shredded signs, sent sheet metal flying and snapped tall trees. So far, two people have been reported dead.
“We have multiple trees down, debris in the roads, do not come,” said the fire and rescue department on the island of Cedar Key, where a tide gauge measured the storm surge at 6.8 feet—enough to submerge most of the downtown. “We have propane tanks blowing up all over the island.”
Hurricane Idalia came ashore in the lightly populated Big Bend region, where the Florida Panhandle curves into the peninsula. It made landfall near Keaton Beach at 7:45 a.m. as a high-end Category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds near 125 mph.
Some models had predicted that Idalia could circle southward toward land again after that, but the National Hurricane Center predicted it would move deeper into the Atlantic this weekend.
In Tallahassee, Florida’s capital city, the power went out well before the center of the storm arrived. Tallahassee Mayor John Dailey urged everyone to shelter in place. Florida residents living in vulnerable coastal areas had been ordered to pack up and leave as Idalia gained strength in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
“Don’t put your life at risk by doing anything dumb at this point,” Mr. DeSantis said Wednesday at a news conference. “This thing’s powerful. If you’re inside, just hunker down until it gets past you.”
Both Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster announced states of emergency, freeing up state resources and personnel, including hundreds of National Guard troops.
Asked about the hurricane Tuesday, President Joe Biden said he had spoken to DeSantis and “provided him with everything that he possibly needs.”
Hurricane Ian was responsible last year for almost 150 deaths. That Category 5 hurricane damaged 52,000 structures, nearly 20,000 of which were destroyed or severely damaged.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently said the 2023 hurricane season would be far busier than initially forecast, partly because of extremely warm ocean temperatures. The season runs through Nov. 30, with August and September typically the peak.
