TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Now that the worst of Hurricane Irma has passed through the Big Bend area, the focus is on cleaning up the mess left behind.
WTXL was there on Centerville Road and Woodgate Way where, due to a big power outage in the area, the stop lights at the intersection were not working. It was a similar scene all across the area.
Leon County's Emergency Management Director tells WTXL that some sort of damage-- whether it's down trees down power lines debris in the street -- is impacting more than 100 local roads.
Crews were told to stand down overnight it wasn't safe to be outside, but now it's all hands on deck as they work to clean up the streets and restore power to the more than 30,000 people still in the dark.
Neighbors we talked to say being without power is inconvenient, but it's an inconvenience they were prepared to deal with.
"We felt pretty confident going into the storm that we did everything we thought you were supposed to do," said Rhett O'Doski, a homeowner in the Betton Hills area. "We lived through Hermine this time last year, [my wife] Ivette lived through Andrew down in Miami/Dade."
O'Doski says they did a lot of preparing: "We boarded up all of our windows with plywood, we have a generator, we have the supplies we have the candles. So we are pretty confident that, even though we have two young children, we'll be fine."
"I just didn't know what to expect in Tallahassee. In Miami, I lived through that," said Ivette O'Doski. "I just wasn't sure what to expect here. We're always concerned about projectiles, trees that fell down, down power lines was a big concern, as well."
Officials are reminding people to never touch or drive over a down power line and you shouldn't try to clean up any of this debris yourself. Just let the city crews come through and clean up safely.
If you come to an intersection where the stop lights aren't working, just use caution and treat it like a normal four way stop.
