“Tens of thousands” of linemen are ready to respond to Hurricane Helene, which is expected to make landfall in northern Florida on Thursday evening, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced.

In a press conference Thursday morning, the governor went over the current state of the storm barreling toward Florida, noting that it is expected to make landfall sometime in the evening. While, at the time of his press conference, Hurricane Helene was a Category 2 storm, he said it is “possible that this storm could make landfall as a major hurricane, as a Category 3, or even potentially a Category 4.”

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“It is moving fast. More rainfall is, of course, expected, and it could lead to significant storm surge in our coastal areas. And so we are prepared for that, of course, and we’ll see what happens in terms of the intensification. I think that these things can rapidly intensify. Sometimes they become major. Sometimes there’s changes. So we’re just going to continue to do our thing and assume that this is going to be a major hurricane when it makes lands fall,” the governor said, emphasizing that the storm is “very large.” Therefore, tropical weather will go hundreds of miles away from the center of the storm.

“[That] doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to have a hurricane Category 3 winds, say, on the east coast of Florida, but you are going to have tropical conditions. It is going to be nasty throughout the latter part of the day here in the state of Florida,” he said, warning of coming power outages and urging residents to stay safe, heed the warnings of local officials, and stay put once the storm hits.

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“It will likely be dark by the time the storm passes. Do not try to do any work in the dark. You don’t know what hazards are out there. There’s going to be debris. There’s going to potentially in some parts, there’s going to be standing water that is difficult to navigate as it is, but to be doing that in the dark of night is hazardous,” he warned, adding that thousands of linemen are ready to restore power.

“We also have tens of thousands of linemen that are at safe locations just outside potential area of impact,” DeSantis said.

“When that storm passes, they are going to go in and begin the power restoration, and that’s something that’s been a priority for us when we do the storm response,” he added, walking through other response teams ready to go:

We now have 3,500 soldiers. We can surge that by another 2,000 from our National Guard, if needed. We have 200 state troopers with Florida Highway Patrol that will also deploy immediately following the storm. Florida Department of Transportation has 1,700 of its members that are working on preparing and staging and response to the storm, and that’s 550 generators, 230 pieces of large equipment and 40 large pumps be able to get some of that water out of some of these low lying areas.

WATCH:

The 11 a.m. Eastern update from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) has Hurricane Helene still making landfall as a “major” storm. It warns of “damaging and life-threatening hurricane-force winds, especially in gusts” that will penetrate “well inland over portions of northern Florida and southern Georgia later today and tonight where Hurricane Warnings are in effect.”

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Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office /TMX