Lakeland Assesses Hurricane Damage, Including a Trashed New Roof at the RP Funding Center
Lakeland city commissioners today watched dramatic footage of police rescues during Hurricane Milton, heard about the storm trashing a new roof at the RP Funding Center and learned that Lakeland Electric restored power in half the time it took after Hurricane Irma in 2017.
It was all part of a nearly two-hour workshop where the city government's department heads shared hundreds of data points about how the city responded to – and was affected by – last week's hurricane.
Check out the slide presentation from the session here or at the end of this or watch a video replay . Also, keep scrolling for the bodycam video.The city's "biggest damage point" was the new roof at the RP Funding Center's Jenkins Arena, according to Joyce Dias, the city's risk assessment manager. The city's insurance carrier used a drone to take photos of the roof damage. The photo below on the left shows damage last Friday; the photo at right shows temporary repairs, still under way.
High winds peeled back portions of the flat roof, letting water intrude. Engineers are examining the roof to determine how the damage occurred before coming up with a plan for permanent repairs.
Similar damage was caused by Hurricane Ian in 2022. As a result, the city contracted with Tampa-based RYCARS Construction LLC in May 2023 to replace the roof at a cost of $2.6 million. The city's property insurance covered most of that cost, and the city applied to FEMA to cover its $629,123 deductible.
Teams from ServPro have brought in dryers and fans to clean up from leaks in time for the next scheduled events, Dias told commissioners.
Other damage to the arena includes dislodged drains and soaked ceilings and insulation.
Just north of the RP Funding Center, the storm knocked down a precast-concrete-and-brick wall at a Parks Department storage building, Parks and Recreation Director Bob Donahay said. He said that led him and Facilities Maintenance Manager Richard Baker to wonder if a small tornado caused the damage to both the arena roof and the parks building.
Police callsEmergency calls were limited during the height of Hurricane Milton's passage through Polk County on the night of Oct. 10 and early morning of Oct. 11, but Police Chief Sam Taylor described — and showed body cam video — of some rescue operations.
One involved a medical evacuation at 11 p.m. as storm winds raged. A woman had a seizure and needed to be transported to a hospital "or suffer a very dire consequence," Taylor said. "She's doing fine
In another case, an elderly woman had to be pulled from a car that went into a watery ditch at I-4 and Kathleen Road. A good Samaritan named Eric — Taylor said he hopes to learn Eric's last name to acknowledge him — waited until officers came.
Police were worried when they received reports of flooding at McKeel Academy of Technology, site of a special needs shelter, around 2 a.m., Taylor said. Plans were quickly drawn to use National Guard troops to evacuate the special needs shelter occupants, he said. The officers who responded found that the flooding was confined to the entrance to the gym but did not affect the shelter area in the gym, so no evaucation was needed, the chief said.
Chief Taylor narrates police video clips:
Restoring electic powerCathryn Lacy, Lakeland Electric's marketing manager, began her presentation by saying pre-staging 250 line workers before the storm for the first time was "a game changer" and she ended with numbers showing how much more quickly power was restored compared to two recent major hurricanes.
After Hurricane Milton, it took seven days to restore the vast majority of the nearly 90,000 Lakeland Electric customers who lost power, she said. By comparison, there were roughly 80,000 fewer outages during Hurricane Irma in 2017, but restoration took more than twice as long: 15 days.
All 412 Lakeland Electric employees played a role in storm preparation and recovery, some in departments different than where they normally work, she said. They were supplemented by mutual aid workers from municipal utilities who came from as far away as Michigan and Wisconsin.They included 260 lineworkers, 218 tree trimmers and 12 damage assessors, she said.
Around the cityA few of the highlights from other presentations at today's meeting:
For more details, check the slide deck from this morning's meeting below or view a larger version :
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