Zeta is Mississippi’s 10th disaster of 2020. That’s a record.
Gov. Tate Reeves and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann were on the Coast on Thursday surveying the damage from the strong winds and storm surge from Hurricane Zeta.
Reeves said he is confident, seeing the amount of damage, that Mississippi will qualify for a federal disaster declaration that will allow residents and local governments to get reimbursement for damages from the storm.
Over the past 50 years, the most federal disasters Mississippi ever had in one year was four, Reeves said.
“In 2020 this will be our 10th federally declared disaster of the year,” he said. That is 2.5 times more than the highest year in the last 50, he said, and it’s just 10 months into the year.
The other disasters were for tropical storms, tornadoes, flooding, the Easter storms and for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Zeta came in at just 1 mph below a Category 3 storm and unlike most tropical systems, didn’t lose its strength through Louisiana and Mississippi, Reeves said. President Trump called him Wednesday at almost midnight Eastern Time to see how conditions were in Mississippi, Reeves said.
Based on the number of requests to MEMA for blue tarps to cover damaged roofs, “We know that we have got a lot of homes affected,” said Greg Michel, director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency.
He’s talked with the emergency directors in Louisiana and Alabama, who also had to deal with disasters this year.
“We talk a lot because we’ve been dealing with the same things and we depend upon one another to get ourselves through,” he said.
There’s still another month to go in the 2020 hurricane season and Michel said, “We’ve got another storm right now that we’re watching.”
