At a meeting of the Senate Committee on Military and Veterans Affairs, Space, and Domestic Security, a deputy from the Florida Division of Emergency Management summarized the scale of recovery work from four 2024 storms and outlined requests for additional resiliency funding and technology investments.

The deputy told the committee that Florida’s 2024 season included Hurricane Debbie, Hurricane Helene, Hurricane Milton and a subtropical event, and that recovery remains ongoing across the Big Bend, Nature Coast and other impacted counties. “Recovery is, of course, the unseen, the underneath the water, the the larger part of the iceberg,” the deputy said, describing response as the visible, short-term portion and recovery as the long-term work that follows.

The presentation gave a topline of response and recovery metrics by storm and program. For Hurricane Debbie the deputy reported more than 218,000 shelf-stable meals delivered, about 321,000 bottled waters distributed, 18,000 tarps issued, roughly 104,000 hot meals provided and over 1,700 missions logged in the state’s WebEOC system; $146,000,000 in FEMA public assistance had been obligated for Debbie with additional projects still in development. For Hurricane Helene the division reported over 1,000,000 shelf-stable meals, 1,500,000 bottles of water, 54,000 tarps and 977,000 hot meals; more than 1.2 million utility accounts lost power and were restored in under a week, and the state had executed more than 4,000 missions. For Hurricane Milton the deputy said the state identified about 37,000,000 cubic yards of upland debris and removed 311,000 cubic yards of waterway debris; Milton-related public assistance obligations were reported at $1,100,000,000, and the division cited $386,000,000 in public assistance obligations across recent storms.

The deputy emphasized logistics and infrastructure: flood-control systems and pumps were deployed across hospitals, schools and other critical facilities; the division reported using dozens of pumps and moving hundreds of millions to billions of gallons of water across the storms (the deputy gave 591,000,000 gallons rerouted for Debbie; 1,400,000,000 gallons repurposed for Helene; and more than 3,300,000,000 gallons pumped for Milton). The division also reported tens of thousands of linear feet of flood-control devices deployed and thousands of missions active in WebEOC (the deputy said roughly 1,700 missions for Debbie, 4,000 for Helene and 5,500 for Milton, with hundreds of missions still active at the time of the briefing).

On federal programs and mitigation, the deputy said the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) had provided about $45,400,000 for resiliency work tied to Debbie, and that FEMA public assistance obligations across events were in the hundreds of millions to more than a billion dollars, depending on the storm and scope. The deputy described the federal reimbursement window and eligibility constraints (90 days with FEMA extension to 120 days in some cases) and urged prompt debris-removal work to secure full federal reimbursement.

The presentation described sheltering efforts and gaps. The statewide emergency shelter plan identifies existing general-population and special-needs shelter locations and projects needs for up to five years. The deputy said 22 of Florida’s 67 counties were in deficit for general-population shelter space and 28 counties were in deficit for special-needs sheltering. The division reported that Helene sheltered 8,450 survivors across 99 shelters and Milton involved about 83,000 survivors across 282 shelters; 52 counties were eligible for noncongregate sheltering (travel trailers and similar options) after Helene and Milton and the deputy said more than 1,000 displaced households used noncongregate sheltering during Milton response.

Committee members pressed on practical issues and ways the Legislature could help. Vice Chair Senator Jay Collins praised the division’s responsiveness and said technology investment could reduce man-hour burdens: “Any soldier will tell you… I can make do with what I have,” Collins said, and he spoke with the deputy about using automation, generative AI and grant-processing systems to reduce manual workload and mission fatigue. Senator Burgess asked about cuts and debris in homeowners’ associations and the deputy advised that private-property debris typically is ineligible for federal pickup unless consolidated adjacent to public right-of-way; the deputy also recommended that HOAs consider emergency reserve funds to cover large cleanup costs.

The deputy outlined the division’s shelter development program and prioritization criteria: a $3,000,000 legislative allocation is used to retrofit facilities that serve as public hurricane shelters, and projects are evaluated using a risk decision-making survey (which reviews site drawings, past storm surge inundation, floodplain status, wind exposure, emergency power and other criteria). The division said it will prioritize projects for counties with projected deficits and aims to favor retrofit of existing public buildings where feasible. The deputy also said FDEM does not certify or designate county evacuation shelters — that responsibility rests with county governments.

Why it matters: the briefing laid out specific resource flows, unresolved needs and choices for lawmakers — from funding mitigation projects through HMGP and legislative shelter retrofits to investing in technology to speed grant processing and reduce staff fatigue. The division framed many requests as investments that reduce long-term costs by shortening recovery time and bolstering resilience.

The session closed with legislators thanking the FDEM team and signaling interest in follow-up budget and policy discussions. The deputy concluded by saying the division stands ready to provide more data, county-level lists of shelter deficits, and pathways to answers on specific questions raised by senators.

Ending: Senators asked staff to follow up on county-specific shelter deficits and debris-eligibility guidance; the FDEM deputy said staff would provide further information and thanked the committee for the opportunity to present.