MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Let's stay in the Florida Panhandle. D.C. Reeves is the mayor of Pensacola, which has a long history of big storms. Mr. Mayor, good morning. Thanks for joining us.
D C REEVES: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: So Debbie just told us people were getting ready the usual way - sandbags, you know, food, candles, etc., etc. How's the city getting ready?
REEVES: Yeah. For better or worse, we do absolutely have experience in this. I was born and raised here. It's kind of a way of life. You remember those experiences that you've been through. And so, fortunately, while we've had to deal with devastation over the years with these particular storms, it also means that we have a pretty educated citizenry that understands what they should be doing.
But also, there are challenges in Pensacola with information, like visitors. We're a year-round tourist destination - and also the influx of new people in Florida. So I've probably gotten a few more emails than most mayors might, given the fact that we've gotten close to 2 million more people in Florida in the last seven or eight years. So this will be a first storm for a lot of new Pensacolians.
MARTIN: Oh, right. That makes a lot of sense. You declared a state of emergency for your city. I understand that the county did also for low-lying areas and mobile home communities. Are people following that order, to your knowledge?
REEVES: Yeah, so far. Zones A and B, which, of course, that will be Pensacola Beach, the Barrier Island and then within the city limits of Pensacola, of course, any of the waterfront and kind of coastal areas, those evacuations are in place. There is a shelter at the Bay Center at our large arena downtown. So those things are well underway, and - but our general feeling is people are heeding these warnings so far. Obviously, there will be some people sticking it out, but Senator Scott was in (inaudible) yesterday with a lot of local elected officials as well, trying to really implore people to listen to these warnings.
MARTIN: I noticed that Pensacola is urging residents to get their information from, quote, "legitimate sources" like the county's emergency management department and the National Weather Service. Is this a concern now? I mean, people getting misleading or inaccurate information when it comes to emergencies?
REEVES: Yeah. It's interesting. It's kind of a welcome to 2026 of the social media world that, I think, negatively impacts situations like this in two key ways. No. 1 is just somebody posting on social media that something happened that may not actually have happened. And certainly, that sends our team into a scramble to try to verify what is and isn't true. So that's why we want people to get it from verified sources.
And then, secondly, one thing is, after a storm, there's a big rush to take photos and go see damage and all of that probably kind of fueled by the social media world. And again, that not only puts lives in danger for those people, but it puts potentially first responders' lives in danger with downed power lines, trees, high water and things like that. So it's an interesting world in 2026, and that's why we really ask folks to make sure that they are getting correct information, not the first thing they see on their social media feed.
MARTIN: Do you have any other big concerns that I haven't asked you about so far?
REEVES: You know, this speed-wise is similar to Hurricane Sally in 2020. However, Sally was not moving directionally very fast. It sat over us for about eight hours. Fortunately, the silver lining is this one is moving quickly, and so it may not be the same number of hours of impact. But nonetheless, this is something we're taking very seriously, and the bottom line is our city and county efforts. There's decades of experience, and everything that is within our control is completed or well underway. So our - certainly our citizens and the nation can rest assured that we can't control the cone. We can't control the speed. We can't control what time it gets here. But we can darn sure control the police and fire, our stormwater ponds and make sure that we are as ready to go for our citizens as we can be.
MARTIN: So you mentioned that you grew up in Pensacola. You've been through, like, Hurricane Sally. There was Hurricane Sally in 2020. In 2004, there was Hurricane Ivan. What do you think that the city has learned from those experiences?
REEVES: Well, first, it does help us because we know to take these things seriously. Hurricane Ivan was a defining moment in this city, I think both in its devastation and really in the prosperity that followed it. There's many things that changed in our city, really for the better in the last 20 years, but I would say most recently, Hurricane Sally, the fact that it really pivoted late, it kind of caught our community by surprise in terms of its intensity and it's - where it was going. The fact that that happened, I think we're seeing this week people taking this much more seriously, getting their boats out of marinas, getting to Lowe's and Home Depot and the grocery store perhaps a little bit quicker because of that being really on the front of people's minds that only 6 years ago we kind of got caught a little surprised.
MARTIN: That is D.C. Reeves. He's the mayor of Pensacola, Florida. Mr Mayor, thanks so much. Stay safe. We'll be thinking about you.
REEVES: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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