A Resolution By The Board Of County Commissioners Of Pasco County, Florida, Recognizing The Outstanding And Invaluable Disaster Relief Assistance Provided By Andrew Fossa, Laura Wilcoxen, Kelsie Hilbert, Kimberlie Miller, Travis Strong, Josh Francis, Brittney Desrosiers, Kelly Heinicke, And Andrew Baxter In Support Of Lee County, Florida

1:14:06R S four. Well Andrew Fossa, Laura Wilcoxon, Kelsey Hilbert, Kimberly Miller, Travis Strong, Josh Francis, Brittany, Brittany, how do you pronounce your last name? Derosure. I will try to do that. Kelly Heineke? Heinekee. All right. De Rosier. Right? No. Derosure. Okay. Oh Andrew Baxter. I've almost missed that one. Andrew. Did I

1:14:36miss anyone? I hope not. Okay. I'll go ahead and and read the resolution. You guys are so far away from the mic, I can't believe it. Ha ha ha. All right, resolution number twenty-three dash zero two seven, a resolution by the Board of County Commissioners of Pasco County, Florida, recognizing the outstanding and invaluable disaster relief assistance provided by Andrew Fossa, Laura Will Coxon, Kelsey Hilbert, Kimberly Miller, Travis Strong, Josh Francis, Kimberly DeRosi.

1:15:08Brittany DeRozier. De Rozier, okay Kelly Heineke and Andrew Baxter in support of Lee County, Florida. Whereas during the early evening of September twenty eighth, twenty twenty two, Hurricane Ian, a category four hurricane, made landfall in Lee County. The event devastated Lee County and its barrier islands. And RAS, the event resulted in widespread destruction, missing persons, and casualties. And RAS seven several major roadways were underwater or affected by wind damage and

1:15:38debris, and water systems and pumping stations were damaged.

1:15:48And whereas despite the capabilities of the Lee County first responders and a powerful response by local and federal governments, Lee County soon found itself in need of support from the nation. ANRAS, the Tampa Bay Area has a network of professionals who are trained, experienced, and prepared to serve during national natural disasters. Pasco County understands the value of providing aid and relief during times of disaster and prides itself on its skilled workforce and its team members'

1:16:18dedication to respect, integrity, innovation, service excellence, and quality. The first responders who are able to travel to assist other communities feel a profound sense of pride in their teams while being able to use their skills in an unfamiliar environment. And whereas when call when called to duty, five of our Pasco County personnel left their families to join a floor the Florida Department of Emergency Management Region 46 All-Hazard Incident Management Team. twenty

1:16:48one day deployment to aid the people affected by Hurricane Ian. And RAS, the Pasco County Board of County Commissioners wishes to extend their appreciation to the team members for their dedicated service to the citizens of Lee County. and whereas these individuals have returned to Pasco County safely, having gained knowledge and experience to aid in serving the citizens of Pasco County in the future. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Board of County Commissioners of Pasco County, Florida, that said board hereby recognizes the outstanding and invaluable disaster relief assistance

1:17:19provided by Andrew Fossa, Laura Wilcoxon, Kelsey Hilbert, Kimberly Miller, Travis Strong, Joss Francis, Brittany DeRosary, Kelly Heinekee, and Andrew Baxter in support of Lee County. Dunner resolved in regular session with a quorum president and voting the six-day. December twenty twenty two.

1:17:36Move approval.

1:17:38Second.

1:17:39All in favor say aye. Aye. Okay. Commissioner Bradford?

1:17:43Good morning. I can't think of a better way to start a legislative career than Uh say thank you to a integral part of our first responders. As I read this resolution it was call to duty that stuck in my head uh as I read it over. Uh you don't hesitate. Call to duty is when the phone rings, you go. And you've been an integral part of the uh response that uh this county sheriff FIRE and your component have done

1:18:14for the citizens of Lee County and I am eternally grateful for your service and I am very proud of you. Thank you. Thank you.

1:18:24Mr.

1:18:24Oakley. Yeah, I'd like to thank you for all your efforts and in that Relief effort. You did a great job. You supported them. They know it. They know you were there. Uh you've learned, they've learned, and and you made it through it with with great values coming out of it. So and experiences that you will learn from the time in the future when you have to do something like that again. But I certainly appreciate everything you've done. Thank you.

1:18:55Okay. And I'd like to say that uh the citizens of the county, we've got a great team here. Uh the the help you give everyone is fantastic, but As the storm led up and we thought it was coming to us, you guys were fully prepared. Everything was gone through. We had the stakeholder meetings, the preparation, um phenomenal setup so that if it did come here, I know we were fully prepared. And it's it's tremendous what's happened for the past several years, how how much better and better it's gotten. So your leadership for us is great. And for you to share with

1:19:25the with the rest of the again the state is hasn't been phenomenal. So we thank you all for all your great service.

1:19:32Um may I?

1:19:33Mr. Ducky,

1:19:34sorry. So um just like I heard about our our uh first responders, I heard great um things about you guys at the FACT conference and Kevin Guthrie was there. Um and of course everyone always raves about Kevin and I I let everyone know we trained him well here on Pasco County. So um he says hello to everybody and thank you so much. I I d you know, for everyone who went down there I just am so grateful and thank you for representing us well and for uh your good service.

1:20:05I just want you guys to know that as we're setting these resolutions up, you see we've got a bunch of them today. I haven't we haven't gone this far in many, many, many years, but uh Mr. Carbello wanted to make sure that everybody was gonna be recognized every step of the way. So Mike, thank you for making this happen as well. But please.

1:20:19Absolutely. Thank you, sir. And again, I I I wanna I wanna thank the board too for you know, Commissioner Brad for bringing this forward and and recognizing um you know, we talk about the tip of the spear, right, with our first responders and and obviously uh having been in the military on my military experience I know that a a small percentage of the force actually sees combat. It's it's it's the it's the shaft on that spear that that continues to uh you know make sure that those folks can do their job. So management and logistics of the of the incident and the operation of the things and the value that you provided out there is integral

1:20:49to making sure that everyone can do their job. So thank you very much. Again, answering the call and and going out and and doing good things. Thank you. All right. Thank you.

1:21:00Any of your team like to speak?

1:21:04No, this was definitely a unique experience. Uh many of our family members, friends, and colleagues throughout the state have, you know, questioned it and compared it to the other large disasters. Andrew, Katrina, Sandy, Michael, and how was this one different? Uh thankfully we were very blessed that while we were stand up stood up here that we could uh take care of Pasco County when it missed us, a lot of the resources were closer to the impact area that we were able to

1:21:34have that quick response and preparation to help out our uh other communities. These are our friends. These are our colleagues that we work with that we see at other conferences. They were stood up to where they could respond and help us, but we were fortunate that we were able to help them. Uh one thing that we noticed is a lot of The emergency management team, quite a few of them had lost their homes. So while they were serving their community, allowing us to come in, they trusted us and turned

1:22:04over their EOC to us to let uh Andrew Fossa and myself be the incident commander and run their EOC for them while they were able to take a break to be able to take care of themselves and their home. So we've definitely brought back a lot of lessons and thank you for your support to allow us to go learn on other disasters. So the lessons that we learned there were able to bring back Take her to our home. Um

1:22:28So Commissioner Truex told me he's from Charlotte County. that they actually recorded the wind, wind gusts well over two hundred miles an hour and steady wind Over a hundred and eighty. So I mean that's far beyond cat five. But I guess the the ones that are official were two miles below a cat five I think but um maybe you heard those stories too. It

1:22:53was catastrophic damage that you saw. Water marks twenty five feet high. As you heard from several other responders, that you know if it came over here, everything west of 19 could have been lost.

1:23:05Yeah.

1:23:06So the team definitely supported and integrated fully into the different aspects of the EOC and 911 to help give them some relief. Before we left, we were able to help with mass feeding. We were able to condense shelter by able to get residents back into homes or other long-term housing solutions. We are able to manage resources. Uh there's a lot of uh resources coming into the county and being able to track those and request them from the state. and keep a tally on where everything is and what

1:23:36we need to support them. Bong days. Yeah. Yeah.

1:23:41Well thank you. Thank you so much.

1:23:43Lauren, when um I went down there to Fort Myers and I looked and a lot of the homes that were there, if they were at that twelve foot, thirteen foot base el flood elevation, they were in pretty good shape. Some knots get still got some hits that were like they would be green at first because they were good and they stayed green but other times they found other damage had to shut 'em down.

1:24:00Some areas were spotty where you could see massive destruction, others, you know, were saved. Some of it was geographical, other was just grace of God.

1:24:09So what I'd what I'd like to do with your team is to actually go let's go take a ride up and down nineteen. Uh let's go take a look at what we have out there. And I want to try to have you guys imagine what we have in place right now for structures compared to what we should be doing. Because right now with Regional Planning Council we get that regional summit, which I I hope you guys will come to that as well. Uh it's all about being resilient. And that's gonna come with the construction standards. We're looking at raising like seawalls up to a a a r a stronger height than we currently have that's going through and that be templates out there right now. But if there's

1:24:40other things that you guys can see that we can actually do to help protect our citizens and you know, grow more resilient down the road. We'd love to get love to get your input.

1:24:47Absolutely. We're definitely looking at a safer, stronger community.

1:24:50Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You wanna go down and take the picture? We'll stay up here or however

1:24:55you would like to do it, so Mr. Chairman M okay.

1:24:57That's good.

1:25:00Must have okay.

1:25:11Just in front of the she'll be a little higher than

1:25:15that. Yeah, here it has this.

1:25:25From the system.

1:25:27Hand Hand out those wait, wait. Hand out those resolutions. I

1:25:30got I go I made a Did he hand them out? Can I have my resolutions please? Yeah.

1:25:36Where are they at here? Is it all of these? Let me take this

1:25:40gather.

1:25:41I'm not

1:25:42sure. Uh yes. Yeah. This is called getting more face time.

1:26:03I'm gonna hang on

1:26:03to one too. Hang on to one together. All right, okay.

1:26:13Thank you.

1:26:16Thanks very well.

1:26:24Okay, well what what is it now? Just a program.

1:26:27It's a Hello.

1:26:31Okay, but it's not on my phone.

1:26:45Well get it.

1:26:50ninety-three is that we got ninety-two is which you're giving a check which one of the time series, but they're getting the checks. Okay.

1:27:03Yeah, but you might as well get.