Surviving Helene: Florida to North Carolina's Unforeseen Battle

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Mike's on Mic, a conversation about politics, government, and Jacksonville with 50-year opinion leaders Mike Hightower, Mike Tolbert, and award-winning broadcaster and longtime political observer, Mike Miller.

[00:00:15] [SPEAKER_03]: Welcome once again to another episode of Mike's on Mic. I'm Mike Miller, and in their remote studios today, Mike Hightower is joining us, and so too is Mike Tolbert.

[00:00:25] [SPEAKER_03]: We had made some changes to what we had planned to discuss today because of recent developments.

[00:00:31] [SPEAKER_03]: I need to preface this by telling you that we are recording on Tuesday, October the 1st.

[00:00:37] [SPEAKER_03]: And in doing that, there's a lot of activity that's going on today, the day of the taping, that obviously won't be heard by you until next Monday when we upload this to our platforms.

[00:00:47] [SPEAKER_03]: But the first thing I want to do before we get into anything is wish our mutual friend, President Jimmy Carter, a very happy 100th birthday.

[00:00:56] [SPEAKER_03]: As I understand it from his grandson, he said his father wanted to live long enough to vote for Kamala Harris.

[00:01:03] [SPEAKER_03]: We certainly hope that he will make it through then and go on for longer than that.

[00:01:07] [SPEAKER_03]: He's been, by the way, in hospice for 19 months. 19 months, which is just remarkable.

[00:01:13] [SPEAKER_03]: Our focus today right now is on our neighbors here in Florida and throughout the South, for that matter, especially in North Carolina, where one of our mics is still at his second home in the storm-ravaged area of Western Carolina, North Carolina.

[00:01:26] [SPEAKER_03]: In Florida, we've got towns and communities that have been destroyed by Haleen, places like Cedar Key and Steenhatchie.

[00:01:32] [SPEAKER_03]: In some ways, we Floridians expect these storms each summer, but in places like Western North Carolina, this kind of hurricane destruction can be a huge and deadly surprise.

[00:01:42] [SPEAKER_03]: It's difficult to comprehend, but in places where so many Jacksonville vacation and live during the summer months, this must be a very total shock to all of them.

[00:01:52] [SPEAKER_03]: We wish them all very well. As of our taping today, rescuers are combing the North Carolina mountains, looking for missing people, finding more, unfortunately, who have perished, and trying to get food and supplies to where people need it the most and where there's a dire need for it.

[00:02:08] [SPEAKER_03]: Mike Hightower, while safe himself, is in the midst of all of this devastation.

[00:02:12] [SPEAKER_03]: Mike, first of all, tell us how you are, how things are going, and what you're experiencing.

[00:02:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Let me just first say to the people who are listening, and I want to say this early on, please, all of you, I encourage you all to go to the Red Cross.

[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_02]: The folks up here, at least in Western Carolina and also on the border of Tennessee, I have never seen devastation like this, and the deeds are unbelievable.

[00:02:35] [SPEAKER_02]: So as we sit in Florida and you're thinking, what can I do?

[00:02:40] [SPEAKER_02]: The Red Cross is a way to do that.

[00:02:42] [SPEAKER_02]: And I just ask that you all consider that, because we never realize how blessed we are until you see, all you have to do is go on Facebook or just Google North Carolina hurricanes, and the scenes you'll see are just horrific.

[00:02:56] [SPEAKER_02]: So we'll start that by one, a prayer for the folks who have lost.

[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_02]: We're almost at 150 people, and they're still finding bodies, unfortunately.

[00:03:05] [SPEAKER_02]: And to the people whose entire towns, homes have been ripped from their foundations and are never to be seen again.

[00:03:14] [SPEAKER_02]: So that's where we are.

[00:03:15] [SPEAKER_02]: So as far as I am, I'm fine.

[00:03:18] [SPEAKER_02]: We have power back, so that means I have hot water and hot coffee.

[00:03:23] [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm good.

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Not internet, as you can probably tell from my background, but the background behind me, I am in the storage room of one of the largest road builders, companies here in Western Carolina.

[00:03:37] [SPEAKER_02]: The 66 employees, just an incredible fleet of trucks and big earth moving equipment, and they are all out as far as their trucks will take them.

[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_02]: They have internet here, so I don't, but I have running water.

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_02]: I have hot water.

[00:03:52] [SPEAKER_02]: I have lights, so I'm in their storage room and talking to you from that.

[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm doing fine.

[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_02]: We got power back.

[00:03:59] [SPEAKER_02]: The town finally got power back last night.

[00:04:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Not all of it.

[00:04:04] [SPEAKER_02]: The devastation from the trees was unbelievable.

[00:04:08] [SPEAKER_02]: So if you look at this, and I'm going to say this up front because of our JEA folks, probably some are still in Florida, but they're probably up here.

[00:04:17] [SPEAKER_02]: When you see a lineman, tell them thanks.

[00:04:20] [SPEAKER_02]: It's unbelievable.

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_02]: When you have a storm like this, what happens is you have linemen who will come in from all over the country to help out, but they cannot take the trees that have fallen and broken the lines.

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_02]: The linemen are not allowed or can't go in there and take the trees down.

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_02]: You've got to have a different group of men or a different group of contractors who go in there and will take trees down or take that in order to get to it.

[00:04:49] [SPEAKER_02]: So you have this coordination of both linemen from all over the country, and then you have the local folks who are with chainsaws to do that.

[00:04:57] [SPEAKER_02]: And, of course, they're working in tandem.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_02]: So you can imagine in these small rural areas, and particularly us, we have, as I told the two mics, we're up to 1,013 registered voters here within the city.

[00:05:09] [SPEAKER_02]: So we're moving ahead.

[00:05:11] [SPEAKER_02]: But you can imagine until last night, no power, no internet.

[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_02]: You can imagine the number of folks who came from Georgia and Florida and everywhere to come to North Carolina get out of the storm.

[00:05:24] [SPEAKER_02]: And now they're up here until yesterday morning.

[00:05:29] [SPEAKER_02]: There was only one road in and one road out, and that went through South Carolina.

[00:05:34] [SPEAKER_01]: That's a good segue point for me, Mike, to ask you about logistics.

[00:05:39] [SPEAKER_01]: You said you are in the storage room of a road contracting company with all these trucks and people trying to go in and out.

[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_01]: For those of us who have been lucky enough over the years to visit Western North Carolina, getting up and down some of the roads are so narrow and curvy and hilly that in a normal time it can be difficult.

[00:06:03] [SPEAKER_01]: I can't imagine what it's like right now.

[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a massive search going on for people.

[00:06:10] [SPEAKER_01]: There's a massive effort up there to try to give water and food to people.

[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Talk to me about the logistics.

[00:06:15] [SPEAKER_01]: What are you seeing and hearing from your friends?

[00:06:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Let me take it from the people who are like in our small town.

[00:06:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Highlands is, as it's called, the Highlands.

[00:06:25] [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of little roads.

[00:06:27] [SPEAKER_02]: When I say it's a one lane road, I'm talking about if you have a small car road.

[00:06:32] [SPEAKER_02]: And all it takes, one, for a tree to take the line down.

[00:06:35] [SPEAKER_02]: But then you've got the tree that blocks people.

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_02]: And you've got a lot of people just in our area that not only have they lost power, but they can't get out of where they are to get to any place.

[00:06:46] [SPEAKER_02]: And you can imagine on some of these little roads, there's no way that anybody, they can't contact anybody to say, I'm stuck up here.

[00:06:54] [SPEAKER_02]: So that's where that is.

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_02]: If you take that, and Mike Tolbert, as you shared with me earlier, if you were to just go online and look at what's happening in Chimney Rock.

[00:07:05] [SPEAKER_02]: By the way, Chimney Rock by Lake Lure.

[00:07:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Totally wiped out.

[00:07:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Too late.

[00:07:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Chimney Rock is gone.

[00:07:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely gone.

[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Ashville, North Carolina, the village downtown.

[00:07:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Water is 12 feet high.

[00:07:19] [SPEAKER_02]: So the logistics, why say the Red Cross?

[00:07:22] [SPEAKER_02]: The logistics is you've got people who are trying to find people.

[00:07:26] [SPEAKER_02]: You've got people who are trying to get to their friends.

[00:07:28] [SPEAKER_02]: They're trying to find out where their relatives are.

[00:07:31] [SPEAKER_02]: So there's the stress when you add that to the logistics is something that is just unbelievable.

[00:07:37] [SPEAKER_02]: You can imagine what our folks at Cedar Key or St. Hatchie are going through.

[00:07:42] [SPEAKER_02]: But up here, you've got the mountains, you've got the roads.

[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_02]: And unfortunately, Mike, to your point on the logistics, you can have a little one-lane road on this side of a mountain, and it's fine.

[00:07:56] [SPEAKER_02]: But 150 or 200 yards there, you've got five or six houses that are blocked that have no lights, nothing.

[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_02]: And there's no water if you don't have electricity.

[00:08:07] [SPEAKER_02]: And if you've got a well, you've got to have power to bring it up.

[00:08:11] [SPEAKER_02]: So it's almost like every community has, and every little area within a community has its own set of logistics, Mike.

[00:08:19] [SPEAKER_02]: And so the big issue here now is on the talk about logistics, you can't – if you do get to a station, gas station, you've got to have cash because there are no electricity to run the pumps.

[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_02]: So –

[00:08:33] [SPEAKER_02]: There's nothing for the ATMs either, by the way.

[00:08:35] [SPEAKER_02]: There's no for ATMs.

[00:08:37] [SPEAKER_02]: So you can't get cash if you don't –

[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.

[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_02]: So as Mike asked about the logistics, you have to go back to no power.

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_02]: And so there were people at our rec center.

[00:08:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Our rec center was open 24-7 in our little town.

[00:08:53] [SPEAKER_02]: And people – they were basically loaning each other money because they had no money to get off.

[00:09:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Once they found a road down to South Carolina by the backwoods to get to Atlanta or get down there, they had no cash to speak of because they had to find gas in South Carolina or Georgia.

[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_02]: So it was – and out of that, you will see people helping people.

[00:09:19] [SPEAKER_02]: And you just see the camaraderie and the compassion and the spirituality that's shown.

[00:09:24] [SPEAKER_01]: It's not unusual for the worst of things to happen to bring out the best in people.

[00:09:29] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sure that's going on all around you.

[00:09:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have flooding, Mike?

[00:09:33] [SPEAKER_01]: I know Asheville is underwater.

[00:09:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have flooding?

[00:09:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Now, as you and Annette had a chance to say, I was on a little bit – I have a – two – I'm on a hill.

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_02]: So the water runs out.

[00:09:45] [SPEAKER_02]: But as we had a little stream that – about eight, nine-foot wide stream, that totally made the garden into a lake.

[00:09:53] [SPEAKER_02]: But we never had any flooding because we were up.

[00:09:57] [SPEAKER_02]: The nice thing about Highlands is there's really –

[00:09:59] [SPEAKER_02]: But what about the town?

[00:10:00] [SPEAKER_02]: The town –

[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_02]: What about the town?

[00:10:02] [SPEAKER_02]: The town runs off – the runoff was pretty well.

[00:10:06] [SPEAKER_02]: It's the streams where the water goes to because all of it runs into what becomes the Colesatur River, which runs down the mountain, which becomes the Tennessee River.

[00:10:14] [SPEAKER_02]: The waterfalls are beautiful, but they are extraordinarily deadly.

[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's been one of the problems is the force of Mother Nature has washed out culverts and the road.

[00:10:26] [SPEAKER_02]: So people have been trapped.

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_03]: One thing I wanted to bring up, too, and I know we're obviously focusing right now on North Carolina, but we cannot forget the amount of damage that was done here in Florida as well.

[00:10:39] [SPEAKER_03]: The West Coast got hit.

[00:10:40] [SPEAKER_03]: The elbow, of course, between the Panhandle and the rest of Florida got hit very badly on its way up to North Carolina.

[00:10:48] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's – I'm sure it's got to be straining the resources like crazy.

[00:10:53] [SPEAKER_03]: We had our electrical workers, and I'm sure JEA threw in all the help they could.

[00:10:57] [SPEAKER_03]: Florida of Power and Light had to.

[00:10:59] [SPEAKER_03]: And now they're needed as well in North Carolina and elsewhere, too.

[00:11:04] [SPEAKER_03]: I might add Tennessee got clobbered as well, and we haven't heard too much about that.

[00:11:09] [SPEAKER_03]: But Tennessee got hit.

[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Kentucky got hit.

[00:11:11] [SPEAKER_03]: This has been a storm of the century, if you will, for many people who've not seen this kind of devastation and are not used to it.

[00:11:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Like we said before, North Carolinians are not used to this kind of weather at all.

[00:11:23] [SPEAKER_03]: You may get a couple of tropical fronts, but never anything like a Cat 3 or a Cat 4 hurricane.

[00:11:28] [SPEAKER_03]: That's just unheard of for your area.

[00:11:30] [SPEAKER_03]: Hi, Tara.

[00:11:31] [SPEAKER_01]: I want to go back to first responders.

[00:11:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:11:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Talk about first responders a little bit.

[00:11:36] [SPEAKER_01]: The heroes.

[00:11:37] [SPEAKER_01]: I know that you have personal – I know you have personal relationships with some of the first responders up there.

[00:11:43] [SPEAKER_01]: And you told us earlier that you had been visiting with them.

[00:11:48] [SPEAKER_01]: What have you learned and seen by association with those people and what they're doing?

[00:11:54] [SPEAKER_02]: What I've watched is you've got these people from Cincinnati who have never been to Highlands, who have never been here.

[00:12:01] [SPEAKER_02]: And all of a sudden they're working – maybe they could be working with somebody from West Tennessee or South Carolina.

[00:12:07] [SPEAKER_02]: And they're doing this by what they know and how they work it out.

[00:12:13] [SPEAKER_02]: Because there's no on-the-ground coordinators.

[00:12:15] [SPEAKER_02]: They're up here doing what they do by what they've done to experience in their gut.

[00:12:22] [SPEAKER_02]: And they've done it regardless of politics.

[00:12:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[00:12:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Politics is not part of this.

[00:12:28] [SPEAKER_02]: It is not part of it.

[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_02]: And I hope it doesn't become one.

[00:12:32] [SPEAKER_02]: It's going to take a while.

[00:12:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's going to take months if not a year to get this thing back together.

[00:12:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Even if you had all the money in the world to do it, it takes time.

[00:12:42] [SPEAKER_02]: It takes sweat equity.

[00:12:44] [SPEAKER_02]: And it takes the tenacity of saying, do I just throw up my hands and move someplace else?

[00:12:51] [SPEAKER_03]: And, Mike, I know you mentioned the Red Cross.

[00:12:53] [SPEAKER_03]: And we will put up a slide on our program here so that you can find out how you can donate to the American Red Cross

[00:13:01] [SPEAKER_03]: and make sure that those dollars do go to the areas where they're most needed.

[00:13:05] [SPEAKER_02]: There's already been one 16-wheeler that has come up already that, according to the people at the community center this morning,

[00:13:14] [SPEAKER_02]: said it was the first truck from the Red Cross bringing – and they were bringing water.

[00:13:18] [SPEAKER_02]: That was the big thing.

[00:13:19] [SPEAKER_02]: It was full of water.

[00:13:20] [SPEAKER_02]: There is the infrastructure of the logistics, but there is the communication and the personal side of the logistics of people looking after people.

[00:13:29] [SPEAKER_02]: And knowing that there are folks out there who we take the Internet for sure, take for granted, or we take a cell phone for granted.

[00:13:36] [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of folks up here in these rural areas don't have all that.

[00:13:41] [SPEAKER_03]: Hey, Mr. Tolber, we haven't talked about your experiences.

[00:13:45] [SPEAKER_03]: Did Brooksville get hit with much of anything?

[00:13:47] [SPEAKER_03]: Did the farm get hurt by any of this?

[00:13:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Not really.

[00:13:51] [SPEAKER_01]: We diced another bullet.

[00:13:52] [SPEAKER_01]: We're very lucky.

[00:13:53] [SPEAKER_01]: We diced another bullet.

[00:13:54] [SPEAKER_01]: We got wind, limbs down.

[00:13:56] [SPEAKER_01]: We got rain.

[00:13:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Our power was out almost two days.

[00:14:02] [SPEAKER_01]: So we couldn't make coffee or take a bath.

[00:14:05] [SPEAKER_01]: But good Lord of mercy.

[00:14:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:14:07] [SPEAKER_01]: The horses are okay, Mike?

[00:14:09] [SPEAKER_01]: Horses?

[00:14:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Horses, I know.

[00:14:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[00:14:11] [SPEAKER_01]: We couldn't get water to them, but that was, you know.

[00:14:14] [SPEAKER_01]: I'll tell you a quick story.

[00:14:16] [SPEAKER_01]: We were bitching and moaning because our power was off.

[00:14:20] [SPEAKER_01]: And all of a sudden, power around us started coming back on, but our power was still off.

[00:14:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And every time you call the rural electric company, you don't get anybody.

[00:14:30] [SPEAKER_01]: You get a message that says, we're all out helping people.

[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Legal message.

[00:14:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, we know what your problem is, and we got trucks in your area.

[00:14:37] [SPEAKER_01]: And this went on for almost two days.

[00:14:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, finally, Saturday morning, about nine o'clock, I went to a drove to a nearby fire station.

[00:14:46] [SPEAKER_01]: And I asked the fireman, I said, can you possibly help us out?

[00:14:50] [SPEAKER_01]: We're 80 years old.

[00:14:51] [SPEAKER_01]: We live on a dirt road.

[00:14:54] [SPEAKER_01]: We don't have power.

[00:14:55] [SPEAKER_01]: People around us have got power, and we can't get through to the electric company.

[00:15:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Can you help us?

[00:15:02] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'll be damned.

[00:15:03] [SPEAKER_01]: He said, I'll call the dispatcher.

[00:15:05] [SPEAKER_01]: And an hour later, they were out here giving us power back.

[00:15:09] [SPEAKER_01]: Thank goodness we're friends.

[00:15:13] [SPEAKER_03]: Guys, we're going to wrap it up here, but there's one thing I wanted to bring up,

[00:15:17] [SPEAKER_03]: which is not part of what we ended up talking about today.

[00:15:20] [SPEAKER_03]: And that is that the three of us have two very good friends who luckily were able to get together,

[00:15:26] [SPEAKER_03]: sit down, and end up shaking hands over hopefully a great agreement for the 600,000 subscribers of Florida Blue.

[00:15:34] [SPEAKER_03]: And I just want to take a moment here to congratulate and thank our friends.

[00:15:38] [SPEAKER_03]: Michael Mayo is the CEO of Baptist, and Darnell Smith, who is the market president of Florida Blue,

[00:15:44] [SPEAKER_03]: for doing such a sensational job in getting together and ironing out the differences

[00:15:49] [SPEAKER_03]: and coming up with a multi-year contract that will keep service going to the people that need it so badly.

[00:15:56] [SPEAKER_03]: So congratulations to both Mike and Darnell, and proud to have you guys as our friends.

[00:16:00] [SPEAKER_03]: By the way, next week, we've talked about this before.

[00:16:03] [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to be talking about the homelessness issue that we have here in Jacksonville.

[00:16:07] [SPEAKER_03]: Cindy Funkhauser of Solzbacher Center will be with us here in studio,

[00:16:10] [SPEAKER_03]: and we hope you will join us for that as well.

[00:16:13] [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for joining us.

[00:16:14] [SPEAKER_03]: Our thanks, as always, to the Jacksonville History Center for their fine sponsorship of our program,

[00:16:19] [SPEAKER_03]: as well as the donors who keep the cameras rolling and the lights on.

[00:16:22] [SPEAKER_03]: We'll see you again next week.

[00:16:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Mike's on Mike with Mike Tolbert, Mike Hightower, and Mike Miller can be found on your favorite podcasting platform,

[00:16:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Facebook, and YouTube.

[00:16:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Visit the website at Mike'sOnMike.com.

[00:16:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Join us next time for more conversation with Mike's on Mike.