 If we could get our city and county representatives in the front, deputy city manager, Beau Ferguson, interim fire chief, Chris Iannuzzi, deputy police chief, Anthony Marsh, county manager, Wendell Davis, interim emergency medical services director, Kevin Underhill, and sheriff, Michael Andrews. So if we could have the superintendent to come forward as well. Okay. So if we could have city, I mean the county and city, let's start with the city here, and then the county following. I don't know if we'll all be able to squeeze in this area. Can you tell me, Amy, from? You'll be exactly. Yes, please. If you could stand beside your counterpart or closest to your counterpart, Amy, from this position, what is seen in the camera? I don't know. Should I have anyone to the right? So we can have the superintendent and also the sheriff to come to the right. Jim, you wanna come on up? If you can stand closest to the person that's your counterpart, I would appreciate it. It was a quick shot. All right. Can you see everyone in the shot? Nope. Let's shift to our right, everyone. That's gonna be a part of how far out. Sorry. Good enough. Okay. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Dawn Douglas Dudley. I am the senior public information specialist for the Durham County Manager's Office. This afternoon, we are holding this press conference to bring our residents and those who are interested in what's happening in the Durham community up to speed on what we're doing to prepare for the pending inclement weather hurricane Florence to impact our area. Our main speaker today is our emergency management director and fire marshal, Jim Groves. Also a part of those who are featured today and available in support of Jim Groves are our deputy chief manager, Bo Ferguson, interim fire chief, Chris Ioanuzzi, deputy police chief, Anthony Marsh, also county manager, Wendell Davis, sheriff, Michael Andrews, interim emergency medical services director, as well as representatives from Durham public schools. At this time, I will turn it over to Jim Groves, our emergency management director and fire marshal. Thank you, Dawn. Again, my name is Jim Groves. I am the city and county emergency management director for Durham and Durham County. I'd like to give everyone just a quick update on Weber app with our preparedness activities and also our coordination efforts with both government entities and also faith-based and private sector organizations. Thank you all for being here and kind of helping us share our community's message and our preparedness efforts. We really appreciate that and the efforts to get this information out. Earlier today, the city and the county signed a declaration of emergency specifically for each entity. Chair Jacobs signed the county's declaration and Mayor Schuyl signed the city's declaration of emergency. Just to let you know on the county side, the declaration of emergency kind of sets us up in our first step for one, implementing the emergency operations plan or how we go about emergency response for disasters. It also supports our request to the state and to the federal government for resource assistance. In addition, it also relaxes regulatory requirements for congregate care entities so they can take care of more people. If it's a rest home, if it's a licensed facility, if it's like a homeless shelter, the county relaxes their requirements so they can take care of more people. So the declaration does that. In addition, it kind of sets us up to receive federal disaster recovery assistance. So any funds that we spend on personnel, equipment or supplies can be recouped and the declaration of emergency is the first piece of that as well. Our coordination efforts have been going on since Sunday. We follow a time delineated schedule, 120 hours out of a notice event and we follow that down to zero hour when the hazard arrives. We have been conducting conference calls with our stakeholders in both government organizations, with the public sector, with the schools, courts, to make sure that we're responding as we need to be, that we have a coordinated and a singular response and we're speaking with one voice. Our coordination calls have been with our shelter teams. It has been with our joint information team. State emergency management and the national weather service and that has included all of our public safety agencies, public health, social services, schools, courts, public works, public information, transportation, communication, utilities and other folks. So we are really trying to foster a whole community approach to this disaster coming upon us. We've identified flood prone locations, locations that have flooded in the past that we've had to either move people out of apartments or homes or their cars have been damaged or we've had to close roads. We've implemented, we've actually uploaded that, those polygons or shapefiles into our alert germ notification system and starting tomorrow and Thursday we'll be sending those messages out to those areas so people know that they need to leave and to make sure their vehicles are clear so they're not impacted by this 10 to 12 inches of rain that we're predicted to receive. We've identified the following evacuation shelters. The pre-event, Bahama, Ruiton will open at 12 o'clock tomorrow and this is a change from what we discussed earlier. Hillside will open Wednesday at 6 p.m. So Bahama, Ruiton for pre-arrival and Hillside for pre-arrival. Bahama at 12 o'clock tomorrow, Hillside tomorrow at 6 p.m. If you come to the shelter, this is mainly for folks that do not feel safe in their home. Maybe a trailer, maybe it's a rough construction, maybe you flooded before and you know that it's gonna be an issue. So these shelters are really just to get folks out of the hazard and give them a safe place to stay while the hazard or the hurricane kind of goes over us. If you go to one of these shelters, bring a sleeping bag, bring snacks, no coolers, no alcohol, no illegal drugs, bring vaccination records for your pets, bring a pet carrier, bring a leash. Now bring your caregiver for individuals who might have access or functional needs. Those are very simple things that we're asking that if you come to our shelters right now, we'll be giving more information shortly about that. We wanna remind folks, please do not call 911 for general information. They are gonna be inundated with emergency calls. So please, if you want to call for information, if it's about the utility, call the utility outage number. Duke Energy is 1-800-POWER-ON. Piedmont is 1-800-449-2667 or 1-800-222-3107. For any other question, we ask you to call the Durham One Call Center at 560-1200 or the County's Helpline at 560-HELP. They'll have the same information, they'll be able to provide that information to you. If they can't, they'll contact us in the Emergency Operations Center and we'll get an answer out. It's important for you folks to know too that once the WINS approach and achieve 40 miles an hour sustained or 58 miles an hour gusts or greater our emergency responders may not be responding. We call that our service level criteria. That's a level three criteria and that is designed not to put them in harm's way. So understand that, that when we say pre-deployed to a shelter, take care of these activities early. We were sincere about that because we don't wanna put our responders in harm's way. Lastly, maybe the most important thing that I can share with you right now. Please be accountable for your own safety. The safety of your family, the safety of your relatives, the safety of your pets. Please don't depend on us for your safety. We will come running, but it's really up to you to be accountable for your own safety. So please, please, please understand this. Responders, depending on how many trees are down the roadways, if utility down, if they're flooded, may not be able to get out within hours, potentially even days, depending on how bad it is. So be responsible for your own safety. We like to say you must do 72. That means be prepared to survive on your own without any assistance for 72 hours. Kinda say camping at home without a campfire inside. All right, be able to do that. So have non-perishable food and water with you for your family and your pets. Have a way to receive emergency messages when the power's off. Have a plan on where to shelter inside of your home. Typically the basement or first floor, inside room, we'd say put as many rooms or walls between you and the outside as possible. Inside bathrooms are a great location. Please don't forget to check on your friends and your neighbors and the elderly before and after their hurricane. Reach out, get them a call, pay them a visit before the hazard arrives and check on them afterwards. If you need more information, please go to Alert Durham for preparedness information. We get you to sign up for automatic emergency messages. That is www.alertdurham.com. Scroll down and hit the sign up and you can receive all of the Automated National Weather Service Alerts. You can receive updates for the Emergency Operations Center and you can also receive recovery information once the storm has passed on what to do. We've also got a lot of information that there was a access or functional need registry. You can register there. You can also learn a lot about more preparedness and recovery information. With that, that is my discussion with you today. I appreciate you coming out. Any questions? Good afternoon. I'm Beverly Thompson with the City of Durham and these men aren't up here just for support but they're here to answer any questions that you might have regarding preparations for Hurricane Florence. We do have people here from the county, the city, as well as Durham Public Schools, as Dawn said. So with that, we'll open it up to questions and if you would introduce yourself and state your question. Thank you. Mr. Saphir, the homeless, and Drew, if you'd like to maybe come up and talk about the contacts that you've made and what we're doing. Thank you for that question. In addition to the shelters at Campus Hills and Hillside that will be opening up as has been mentioned, Urban Ministries of Durham is adding extra cuts so that they can accommodate as many additional focus possible and we have done outreach to the other outreach teams through Housing for New Hope and Open Table Ministries to make sure that folks know that Urban Ministries has additional beds available and about the emergency shelters that are also available. I think on top of their additional capacity, which is about 180, they're adding 20 to 30 additional cuts. I'll let's end the week. Could you all speak about your expectations in terms of flooding, whether there are concerns around flooding as a result of drainage, river flooding? What do you expect in the next few days? I think we can expect both. What we're hearing, if it holds true with the forecast over the next, when this thing starts Thursday night, Friday morning, for the next two and a half, three days, 10 to 12 inches of rain. So I think we can expect both, depending on if we get a hot pocket, we can send you flash flooding, but we can definitely expect riverine flooding and the traditional flooding around the drainage areas that have caused problems in the past, either debris back up, or once the water's come up, they find debris to bring back down with them and it can clogs pipes. So we expect it in the traditional areas that we've seen in the past. Don with the Herald Sun again. You'd mentioned earlier that the Little River Reservoir could be strained or an issue with Lake Mickey. Can you talk more about that? Hi, Bo Ferguson, Deputy City Manager of the City of Durham. We don't have concerns about the reservoirs. We are releasing water now from the reservoirs to ensure that they can handle additional water. In addition, though, out of an abundance of caution, we will have staff at both facilities throughout the event monitoring both facilities. They're designed to be able to handle, unfortunately, these sorts of extreme conditions. We expect that they will be able to handle these conditions and if for any reason we experience any trouble at the facilities, we'll work with emergency management to push that information out, but right now we do not anticipate any problems at those two reservoirs. Hi, Amy Blaylock, Durham Television Network. We're getting a question here. We're streaming live on Facebook and one of our viewers would like to know, will Durham City water flow even if the power is out? So Deputy City Manager, could you address that for our viewer? Yes, again, Beau Ferguson, Deputy City Manager for Operations. The Durham City water system, the water utility that serves Durham and Durham County is extremely resilient. It's designed to operate in these conditions. All of our water treatment plants, all of the booster facilities that provide water into the water system have backup power, have multiple connections to the power grid and they're designed to be operational. So if water is coming out of your tap during this event, which it should be, the water is safe. The only thing that might interrupt water supplies and water main break, which can happen outside of extreme weather events, certainly can happen in extreme weather events, but we have no reason to think that this event will have any abnormal effect on the water supply. Certainly if extreme conditions do warrant that we push information out, we would share that, but under normal circumstances, a hurricane, heavy rain event like this will not affect the water supply in any way. That's a question for Bo again. Is there anyone that's gonna round up all the lime bikes on the streets if we're worried about projectiles? I see our director of transportation, Terry Bellamy, who's available and he can address that question. Good afternoon, Terry Bellamy, director of transportation, City of Durham. We've notified lime bike and span to remove the bicycles from the right of way during this event and that's common practice when you have a hurricane like winds is to move and retrieve. Our goal is to try to get 100%, it's short notice, so that's what we would do with the bikes. What's the, what are the plans for responding to power outages, particularly prolonged ones? Partly a Duke energy question, but can you talk a little bit about the coordination with the power utilities? Sure, I mean power is a very difficult question to answer simply because it depends on what infrastructure is damaged and how long that's gonna be out. Part of that is that culture of preparedness and being prepared for 72 hours. If anyone around here experienced Fran in 1996, power is out for up to two weeks. So part of that is camping at home and understanding how to survive without our air conditioner and things like that. We can make it for the most part, some sensitive populations can't, but we work with the utility, one to identify with them our areas of need, our shelter locations, hospitals, emergency operations center, public service facilities and things like that. And then it's really kind of up to them. We share the need, but based on the utility, they'll have to work transmission lines before they get down to service lines. And unfortunately that takes some time to do that. We do have the superintendent of Durham Public Schools here and I would ask you if you'd like to make a statement or share any information. Aaron Mollio, Chief Operating Officer of Durham Public Schools. Again, we appreciate the cooperation amongst the entities within the city and county. We are working to open hillside. We have three other high schools as secondary possible shelters. We have announced that Durham Public Schools schedule will be a normal scheduled tomorrow, extracurricular activities tomorrow evening, a three hour early release Thursday and no extracurricular activities from Thursday afternoon through Sunday. Folks again, Jim Groves, the city and county emergency management director. I'd like to just give a few closing remarks. One to let our community know that this has been a tremendous effort and a team response with the city and county. They've been incredibly proactive, very supportive of our emergency planning needs well before the incident, but especially as we gone into our kind of a crisis mode in the emergency operations center. A message I would like to make sure we leave with folks in addition to self preparedness, family preparedness and pet preparedness. Make sure when these winds comes that there's nothing around your yard or patio or deck that can become a projectile. And these things can range from trampolines to patio furniture, to grills, to trash pickup boxes. I think that we're looking at recycling bins, anything like that. Think about what's around your house that could become a projectile because it probably will. While you're out there, look around your neighborhood. And if you've got a neighbor that hasn't done that, get them a friendly knock on the door and ask them to do that because that piece right there very well could pay you a visit in one of your windows or your home. So please make sure that things are really buttoned up, tightened up and ready to go with this storm. Last thing I wanna say is that, administrator Brock along with FEMA is a North Carolina native and he is really preaching on this culture of preparedness and that's not just for government, it is for individuals. So please take our warnings seriously, survive on your own, make sure you got this stuff taken care of so you don't have to reach out for help. We'd rather you be self-sufficient and happy at home than have to visit us in one of our shelter locations. All right, thank you all so much for coming. We'll be pushing out information through Alert Durham as well as we invite you to keep a check on our websites, the city and the county websites for information. Thank you all for coming.