Gov. DeSantis describes Idalia and Debby like 'night and day, in recovery efforts

STEINHATCHEE, Fla. - Nearly a year ago, Linda Wicker found her waterfront restaurant covered in 6 feet of mud and marsh grass after Hurricane Idalia slammed into Taylor County.

The Category 4 storm required four months of cleanup and repairs to reopen Roy’s Restaurant, which sits along the Steinhatchee River.

On Tuesday, Wicker said she was "blessed" after Hurricane Debby, a rainmaker that didn’t cause anywhere near as much damage as Idalia. She plans to reopen Roy’s, her family business for more than two decades, on Thursday.

"As things turned out, we are so thankful that there’s no damage," Wicker said.

"We’ve just had some very loyal customers over the years, friends, family, and we are going to be really happy to welcome everybody back," Wicker added.

Debby, a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph, made landfall Monday morning near Steinhatchee. It came after rural Taylor County also took the brunt of Idalia, which made landfall in Keaton Beach last August.

Debby moved across North Florida and into Georgia on Monday, dumping heavy rain. By midday Tuesday, the center of what had become Tropical Storm Debby was just south of Savannah, Ga., according to the National Hurricane Center.

Taylor County Sheriff Wayne Padgett said Tuesday the priority was getting electricity back on in the region.

"The biggest issue right now is power, getting power back up, getting people back home and situated and in the air conditioning where they can cool off," Padgett said.

Utilities were down to 89,000 customers in Florida without power after more than 600,000 outages were reported, according to PowerOutage.us. Taylor County accounted for 7,900 of the remaining outages or just over half of its utility customers. Suwannee County had 11,852 outages, Madison County was at 11,546, Columbia County had 11,194, Dixie County was at 10,595, and Jefferson County was at 8,797.

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Meanwhile, the Florida Municipal Electric Association said Tuesday afternoon it had restored power to virtually all 80,000 municipal-utility customers who had outages.

While the state started recovery efforts, Gov. Ron DeSantis described Idalia and Debby as "night and day."

"With Idalia there was debris everywhere," DeSantis said during an appearance at Roy’s.

"This is a very heavily wooded area … There (were) trees down. There were things all over the roads. It was a lot, particularly in places like Taylor (County) and Dixie County," DeSantis said. "As you get into North Central Florida, what I've seen (from Debby) has not even come close to that. And you wouldn't expect that. Idalia was just a hair under a Category 4 hurricane. It was a major hurricane. And it didn't leave the same amount of water that we've seen in other parts of the state, but it did pack a really significant punch. And so, ultimately, that's a good thing."

But while Debby wasn’t as destructive as Idalia, DeSantis said that doesn’t lessen the impact on people who have gone through both.

"To then have another storm come through as you're still picking up the pieces, even if it wasn't as powerful, it's almost like salt in the wound," DeSantis said.

Flooding is expected over the next few days, which could affect homes and businesses across northern and central Florida.

At least four deaths in Florida have been attributed to the storm, with two in Dixie County, one in Hillsborough County and one in Levy County. A teen died in Levy County after a tree crashed through the roof of a mobile home.

The other deaths involved vehicle crashes.