Hurricane Michael rocked the Gulf Coast being the most powerful hurricane to hit the area. This morning I read a post about it being stronger than Katrina. Regardless of which was more powerful, the emerald coast will take a while to recover. Many of the beaches have been wiped out. As I am typing this out I am emotional about it because this is my area. These are the beaches I visited on a regular basis. My town endured Hurricane Michael as it was a category 3 storm. Yesterday I was in Marianna, Fl where that area was devasted as well. There was a gentleman at the event I was working who told me it was his first day out of his property since the storm hit, almost a whole week. He was trapped.
One of the best things to come out of a tragedy like this, is people uniting. Businesses alike are helping. Verizon is giving three months of service to the Bay and Gulf Counties of Florida. For more information please keep reading. Info given is from their press release.
Verizon is 100 percent focused on repairing our network in the Florida Panhandle. We are making progress every hour, and we expect that trend to continue at a rapid pace. We won’t rest until service is completely restored.
Every Verizon customer in Bay and Gulf counties will be automatically credited for 3 months of mobile service for each line. This free service is for both consumer and business accounts.
We will continue to regularly update our network recovery information HERE.
As our recovery work continues, we have deployed portable cells to support the critical effort of first responders and other mission-critical organizations, including:
- Bay County Emergency Operations Center and 911 Center
- Bay County Sheriff’s Office
- Blakely Emergency Operations Center
- City of Parker Police Department
- FDOT Chipley Office
- FEMA Office
- Gulf Coast Regional Medical Center
- Gulf County Emergency Operations Center
- Lynn Haven Emergency Operations Center
- Mexico Beach
- Miller County 911
- Panama City Police Department
- Springfield Police Department
- TECO Peoples Gas, Panama City
- Tyndall Air Force Base
- Washington Emergency Operations Center in Chipley
