 Good afternoon. Columbia City Manager Teresa Wilson. As committed, the City of Columbia is going to continue to have regular updates and briefings as Hurricane Florence is upon us. We have again invited all of our community partners and agencies to give any pertinent updates as well. Today we hope to be a bit more abbreviated as obviously our first responders are in the field working. We want to focus on the public safety and public works aspects of what is going on in our community and to really give a big thank you and shout out to the citizens of Columbia and Richland County for adhering to the warnings for making sure that they are following all the safety protocol that we've continued to give and staying off the streets. We know sometimes it can be a bit of a misconception when you don't see as much rain but there has certainly been a lot of wind and we want to continue to drive that point home that we certainly would advise that you stay home during this period of weather uncertainty. So with that I'll hand off to Mayor Benjamin for some opening comments. We're gonna quickly move into updates from our public safety officials and public works officials and then any other additional comments particularly from the United Way of the Midlands and transitions because we wanted to address any concerns the public might have for our most vulnerable citizens and homeless population that there have certainly been lots of activity and the right protocol being put in place for them as well. Thank you. I think as a city manager mentioned we're gonna have a much tighter briefing today. Keep it as brief as possible and make sure everyone including our staff has a chance to get home and be with their families if the weather does in fact turn. I will say our primary concern is with the families along the coast of north and south Carolina have lost their lives and lost their loved ones and suffered significant property damage. We keep them in our prayers and we're going to continue to do everything we can here in the Midlands to make sure that our citizens stay safe. Everyone has a role in making sure that that happens when encouraged you if you don't have to go out stay home stay home enjoy this time with your family listen to the admonitions of our public safety professionals but we've learned their experience that constantly sharing information recognizing that we all get our information from different sources at different times in different ways right now is the key. So we wanted to make sure that very least we had our first responders and all of our subject matter experts here to share information we're surrounded here today with our representatives from from every sector you can imagine a representative from Congress when Clarence office and congressman Wilson's office all of our county council members and our chair of the county of county council we have Pima health and our leaders from the Columbia Chamber of Commerce the city center partnership and obviously representatives from the comet as well been working with us as Ms Wilson mentioned closely with CPD and all of our homeless services providers we have the CEO of the United Way and also the CEO of transitions here with us here today I think I've touched on on everyone of course and even on the weekend we have our education professionals our superintendents of Richard one and Richard two who have been doing what they always do and meeting the needs of our entire community feeding our children even though schools out and meeting our educational needs while our children are not in school that being said we're going to move on through the agenda I'm asked police chief skip Holbrook to come up and give us a quick update good afternoon briefly reiterate what Ms Wilson said thank you to our citizens you heated our warnings you stayed off the street it's allowed us to get where we need to be expeditiously take care of public safety matters our status is everything's normal we will continue to be upstaffed through the evening we do expect some you know a continuation of some wind and strong strong wind and rain but we are not experiencing any remarkable calls for service this this time not anything that was unplanned thank you quiet night in the county last night people are staying in which is which is a good thing our public safety teams are ready to respond I do want to thank the governor and our adjunct general for Biden the South Carolina State Guard the military police they've been positioned at our shelters and providing security there which allows us to have more deputies on the road so we're able to respond emergencies and we're also able to protect property so that has tremendously helped us out I know two days ago I said that we have an army when we put us all together that's not quite right we've got a navy because we've got boats we've got an air force because we got aircraft so we're prepared and if the Marines need to be called out Chief Holbrook and Chief Jenkins are ready to go so we're prepared you know your public safety is there we're ready and we've got the equipment and personnel so again thank you everybody for listening to us continuing to heed these warnings we're not out of the trouble yet so you know let's let's all be safe I too want to reiterate just say thank you to the public for just heeding the warnings to stand off the road that really makes our job a whole lot easier we will continue to be staffed up we still have our solid team and our water rescue team in place and we continue to have that in place throughout this event so you know we haven't had many calls for service as far as weather related we did have a structure fire early this morning but there was not a weather related incident so again thank you all for just doing what we've actually to do and we'll continue to serve you as we should Assistant City Manager for Water, Clint Shealy. Good afternoon. We are faring very well right now from our water and wastewater perspective on distribution and collection. We've had a few minor power interruptions at some of our pump stations but SC&G has been remarkable in their response to us and very helpful to get things back running. We're monitoring our wastewater collection system we've had no sanitary sewer overflows to date we've had no water main breaks or service interruptions so we're very pleased with that so far. The canal is stable we're managing the water levels appropriately and feel really really good about our position right now but are inspecting that routinely and continue with our level of concern about high winds and any heavy precipitation. From a customer care perspective our call volume is relatively low right now but I encourage our customers if you do have any issues that are non-emergency to call our customer care hotline that's man 24-7 you can reach that at 803-545-3300 and again I'd like to thank our team for our staff for working so hard to respond to the challenges that we've seen so far. Thank you. Director Tinsley. Just a real quick update on EOC operations the weather right now currently Florence has been downgraded to a tropical storm the winds are 45 miles per hour moving north moving west at two miles per hour it's just off of Myrtle Beach about 40 miles. An update on our situation in the EOC we're continuing to monitor our folks are in place we've had some isolated power outages here in the city utility crews are working on those to make sure they're getting up in place as we said some of our public safety partners have already said call volume is normal but we stand ready to go thank you. I have a partner agency speak one I'm sorry I'm sorry Robert Anderson I apologize Robert director public director public works I apologize. Thank you we're also receiving some small call volumes we want to thank the citizens for staying off the street but we also want to thank them for notifying us we've had about 20 calls for tree related issues right now just got off the phone with our forestry superintendent and we only have one road blocked and the crews are there now our street division crews are rotating throughout the city right now they are making sure that any debris that gets in front of the low-lying storm grains are clean and also our traffic engineering is experiencing some issues right now with some flashing traffic lights and the power outages are causing some concerns at the traffic lights we want to remind everybody two safety concerns once again if you see a tree down assume that there may be a power line in it and let our professionals take care of it call the five four five thirty three hundred number and if you come up to a traffic light that is not functioning at all or has flashing lights treated as a four-way stop once the power comes back on and once our crews respond we'll get them back on as soon as possible thank you. Thank you Robert and I want to admonish everyone again in our 11 o'clock briefing so the manager was careful enough to make sure we all realize we are not close to out of the woods and that we all are expecting a very difficult weather this is obviously better weather than we expected at this point but we've got a long way to go before we shift into the next phase and obviously if we're blessed to make it through the storm then as a community we'll come together and make sure we we immediately meet the needs of our of our friends and families most affected by the storm in other parts of the state and in North Carolina I did also want to make sure everyone had the s c e n g phone number if you if you see some down power lines the contact them at 888-333-4465 you can also of course go online the report an outage at s c e n s c e g dot com slash storm as of 11 o'clock there were 1400 19 folks without power in richland county 248 of them and in columbia most of them focused in the southeast to eastern side of town and I know that s c n g is working diligently to get those folks back up and running want to shift to some of our partner agencies to share any specific updates no one's compelled to speak but there's something that you want to make sure the public has information let's make sure that they have it madam chair did you want to say something good afternoon I'm Joyce Dickerson chair of richland county on one on behalf of and on behalf of richland county I have several of my colleagues here with me today and we are here to let you know that we are constantly in communications with the sheriff and with the mayor and all of the city officials to make sure that we're working together to make sure that this county and this city is safe and therefore we've got lots of people in the in the area working in public works doing an assessment of the area throughout the county and we just want you to know that we are here to make sure to show our support to all of us showing that we're all working together to make sure that our citizens are safe thank you very much thank you so much man chair uh dr davis for richard today thank you miss mayor um just as an update uh at about 2 p.m. on tomorrow the richland to uh executive staff the superintendent's cabinet will be holding a meeting uh phone conferences discuss and assess the situations in our particular school district and area so that we can provide you with information uh relatively quickly as relates to monday but just as a reminder the school districts are closed by the order of the governor and so if that order is not lifted we would not have an opportunity to open schools on monday should schools not open on monday but it is safe to continue to have lunch services provided for our students we will continue to provide lunch services at both dent middle school and ridge view high school um as conditions continue to improve we'll continue to assess those conditions by sending out our operations and logistics team as well as our security forces to look at our property and our schools and structures to make sure those uh places are safe and secure for our students as well as our roads and pathways to ensure that our students get to and from school safely and again i'd just like to thank all of the members of the district family our teachers parents students community partners for all that they've done to ensure that everyone stays safe and secure if you have an opportunity to check on your neighbors um after you've taken care of your family please do so to remember that we are all one family uh special um just thanks to our communications department for making sure that we stay up to date and we get that information out to you all in a timely manner as well as our operations and logistics and security forces for making sure that everything is safe and secure and our financial department for making sure that all of our financial obligations and resources are taken care of and available to all of uh our particular members of the school district thank you thank you dr willis for what you want thank you and good afternoon um as dr say davis said we will continue to monitor uh the governor's order uh we received information uh early this afternoon with from the state superintendent's office that um hopefully the governor may be making some announcement either later on today or tomorrow and we too will continue to assess uh our security and our safety and maintenance folks have been out uh of course throughout this time monitoring uh we did have in the single digits uh a couple of folks that visited lower richland high school uh during the storm and our folks are there uh now we'll continue to monitor uh we had a relatively large tree to fall uh in in at gaston elementary uh no damage to the building um but we will continue to monitor as we know in the in the county and and and throughout the wind speeds vary so we'll continue to monitor and and check those things uh as we go through and again we encourage all of our parents to stay safe appreciate our teachers and administrators still providing some lessons and and activities for students as we go through this time and uh again monitor the website and social media on updates as they come thank you thank you uh janando see you in the comment good afternoon uh we at the comment we're still here to serve and provide assistance as necessary we do have staff that is providing shuttles to help those get to evacuees help the homeless get to shelters so we're available for assistance to our local governments services still remain suspended i will be communicating with local government and the eoc to determine when it'll be safe for our buses to return back to service we do encourage our passengers to continue to visit our website at catch the comment org or call our hotline at 803-255-7118 to get up to the minute information about when services could be potentially restored we also have live customer service agents available at 803-255-7100 thank you karno curry from transitions uh good afternoon uh all homeless shelters remain open uh open in the midlands area to include transitions so homeless folks are continuing to get services i'd highlight too that we've been on expanded capacity since wednesday evening and tonight we'll have the day center open at transitions and tomorrow night as well to take expanded capacity there uh we've served at lunchtime over a hundred more meals than normal so we're at 335 the salvation army has helped us tremendously uh serving meals to those in need i'd also highlight that washington street united methods church has opened its doors to take people in they had 14 people there as well last night who all were homeless but again they've opened their doors to take additional overflow there so there's plenty of places to go we're taking everyone at transitions 18 or older and and we're opening our doors to get people in off the street we've been coordinating with the city all week and with united way and we're grateful for their support thank you thank you karno sarah fawcett the c of united way the midlands thank you mr mayor i just want to add a little bit to what kernel curry had to say uh we have had volunteers out street outreach volunteers and workers out on the street since monday letting our people that are unsheltered know what very various sheltering options are we've had volunteers at transitions that are taking advantage of the opportunity to talk to people who ordinarily would not seek shelter to get a chance to screen them for potential housing options and again i want to thank uh the transitions in the salvation army for all that they've done for this population thank you and i think it was stated earlier but obviously we have representatives from both congressman clarence office and congressman wilson's office to dialogue with the district directors for both senator graham and senator scott we are all one big team here working together in the interests of all of our citizens and again i want to just point a personal privilege i want to thank uh teresa wilson and our entire team uh at the city uh director tensley we've been preparing for this working with all of our partners arm in arm and i will tell you it's not just when the storms come but but throughout the year we work together to make sure this is a a place that enjoys a high quality of life but when the times get get tough and rough uh we all step up we all step up and thankful for the these men and women who make this place a special place to live uh unless um someone else has a report they want to give or a statement to make we can go straight into um any questions that the press might have miss them again please go ahead dear okay please we also want to additionally thank the Salvation Army again not only for their work with the united way of the midlands and transitions for a homeless community but they are also providing meals for our first responders today and any first responders they shouldn't know that through their supervisors but please go to the public works facility off of slides avenue um Salvation Army does have meals prepared for you all today we would continue to encourage the public to utilize the columbia sc.net net website all of this information we just shared is there um in a collective fashion as an incident response briefing so many of the numbers we've said um other agencies information is linked from that website and the customer care number again is 545-803-545-3300 545-3300 any questions i know we have one firefighter as of yesterday who suffered a rolled ankle to Jenkins um no broken bones we're very thankful for that i talked to our team this morning and everyone's continuing to focus on safety pushing safety first with our first responders we hope that is our only injury sarah we pray for that and one thing one fire but not stormy later yep we've done a great job of staging barricades um robert all of that still working as planned so no no roads there there's power and prayer okay keep on praying keep on praying yeah but um let's make sure that um let's make sure that we remain vigilant and realize that we are not out of the the woods yet so everyone uh let's continue to follow protocols we we got we got several more hours of this to go i think it looks like um harry maybe through the mar we'll have an idea as to where we are and and i'm encouraged that that what we've been able to stand up with the folks here and all of our other partners the camp central carolina community foundation columbia cares and everyone else then we will have to shift into into mode two and make sure that again our our citizens from other parts of the state in north carolina who've been most gravely affected by this um have what they need and uh and we're certainly prepared uh to step up and do that um as as we as we should it's fair to say this is probably greg been the most unpredictable storm we've ever seen so i think we're you know we're we're preparing for anything but still remain very hopeful and um and that's that's probably our posture right now i think several of the experts you've heard whether it's been clint shealy with columbia water and you know staging for pumps just in case um cutting get in the head gates secured ahead of time from a technical perspective those type things with the canal because obviously that is um a vulnerability that we continue to live with um so being knowing that from what we experienced in 2015 and how we've now done the best we can until we have the final solution there um you know you have to learn from those experiences obviously but i would say as mayor benjamin has continued to encourage us and and this council to be very transparent with the public and these regular updates you know to some might seem like overkill but what i hear and our safety and risk management director uh demetrius rump was telling us last night in the grocery store he was just there picking up something for his family and all he got from the public was thank you for letting us know and keeping us informed and so we thank you all the the media for being our partner as well because i think that was a great lesson that people want to be informed and they want to that gives a certain reassurance to the public absolutely i drove around the district jim mading richam county council i drove around district eight and district five of county council the gills creek watershed area and the lake owner folks have done an exceptional job of lowering all those lakes in that area and that's something that didn't get done as well as it should have last time so again that's the citizens stepping up and everybody's stepping up but that's a very significant difference and you all as you do your jobs inform the public you'll be safe too all right uh we need we need you back on the job on monday too thank you my bless