AccuWeather spoke with Jace Johnson of the Corpus Christi Fire Department in Texas on how his area is preparing for the impacts of the first named storm of the season, Tropical Storm Alberto.
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00:00Thanks so much for joining us today, Jace. Let's get right to the questions.
00:04What's the latest and any weather impacts during the overnight hours?
00:10Yeah, so this has been a very interesting system moving through, like you just you've just briefed
00:17on all of the energy that it's that is sending to the north. For us, it's just been flooding,
00:24like you said, with the beaches, low-lying roads, and so we picked our emergency plans
00:29into place, making sure that as those affected areas are identified, that we have barriers in
00:36place and communications to let people know that, hey, when in doubt, you know, turn around,
00:41don't drive into any flooded areas. And any, what about the, in Corpus Christi itself,
00:48as we have, have we had any flooding or is it mostly been in the typical low-lying areas?
00:54Uh, we have had some closer to the beach areas, right, the north beach area and some low,
01:01low-lying roads, but, but so far we've been very fortunate that the rain has come in waves.
01:08It hasn't been very consistent as we thought it might be at the very beginning. So, so far
01:13everything is, you know, definitely what we can handle because we're used to this kind of weather.
01:18And this breaking news, by the way, we now have our first tropical storm of the season. This is
01:25Alberto. It has just been named by the National Hurricane Center here. Whether it's a, whether
01:32it was going to be a tropical storm or it wasn't, the impacts are going to be the same in Texas,
01:37but again, this is now a tropical storm Alberto. Now, back to our interview here. How are you
01:43preparing for this storm? Are, are your areas, any areas your teams are concerned most about?
01:51Yeah, well, fortunately, as everybody knows, you know, South Texas has been in a drought,
01:54so we're very thankful for the moisture and the rain, but with regard to flooding, you know,
01:59we've worked with the National Weather Service and we've known that this, this is coming,
02:03so we activated our emergency plans to make sure that the community was aware of what's going on
02:10and that we had staff in place to make sure that, you know, we can handle road closures
02:15or search and rescue operations if that becomes necessary. And even if an evacuation was needed
02:23in a neighborhood that we're all set up and ready to go, should that be necessary. Now that we're
02:28in hurricane season, what are your teams working on as, as we are anticipating a very or supercharged
02:35hurricane season in the Atlantic Basin? Yeah, a lot. We're making sure that, you know,
02:42that Corpus Christi is an essential community. All of our city employees are considered essential
02:48and activated during a, during a hurricane response. We make sure that all of our
02:52emergency response plans are all up to date and in place. We train throughout the year,
02:59and so, you know, when this, when this system came around, it was a simple process of getting
03:05people into committed and getting them into place. So this is, you know, normal business for us.